Elon Musk’s Tesla Robotaxi Reveal Is Filled With Glamour But Missing Details
During an event at a Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) studio in Burbank, Calif. yesterday (Oct. 10), Elon Musk unveiled Tesla’s long-awaited robotaxi and the company’s vision for autonomous vehicles. The event was filled with flashy entrances, bartending robots and lofty promises but failed to deliver concrete timelines and details.
Musk started the presentation by driving through Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio in Burbank, Calif. in a “Cybercab” prototype, a sleek two-door autonomous taxi with no steering wheel or pedals. “It’s going to be a glorious future,” said the Tesla CEO, who later touted robotaxis’ potential impact on productivity, driving safety and green space.
Autonomous cars will eventually become ten times safer than human-driven vehicles, claimed Musk, who said the advent of self-driving vehicles will reduce the need for parking lots and free up space for parks in cities around the world. Unsupervised Full Self-Driving (FSD), a future version of FSD that will be fully autonomous and therefore classified as level 3 self-driving or above, will be rolled out across Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y in Texas and California next year and expand based on regulatory approval, said Musk. The Cybercab, meanwhile, will supposedly start production in 2026 with a price tag of less than $30,000—making them more affordable than the Model 3, which start at around $43,000.
Despite Tesla’s glamorous unveiling, investors were seemingly unimpressed by the company’s ability to compete against robotaxi rivals like Alphabet (GOOGL)’s Waymo. Tesla shares fell by nearly 8 percent today (Oct. 11). The company’s “latest version of Full Self-Driving travels 71 miles between critical disengagements, in contrast to Waymo’s 17,311 miles,” said Dan O'Dowd, a software entrepreneur and Tesla critic, in a emailed statement to Observer. “Elon Musk is trying to compete in the Tour de France on a tricycle.”
Some analysts, however, hailed Tesla’s robotaxi as a pivotal moment in the electric vehicle-maker’s transition towards autonomous driving. Yesterday’s event “will mark the inflection point” in Tesla’s journey to a broader player across A.I., robotics and disruptive tech, said Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives in an investor note. The products unveiled during the event could eventually represent up to 20 percent of Tesla’s overall profits by the end of the decade, he estimated.
Can Tesla actually deliver on Full Self-Driving?
But that’s if Musk can actually come through on his promises. The billionaire has been setting timelines for level 3 self-driving for years now. Earlier this year, for example, he suggested that unsupervised FSD could hit the road by the end of 2024. The company’s most recent plans to commercialize autonomous vehicles have been “vague” and “underwhelming,” said Josh Beck of Raymond James in an analyst note, highlighting the company’s “ambitious timelines.”
During yesterday’s event, Musk repeated other declarations he’d made in the past, claiming Tesla users would soon be able to fall asleep at the wheel and wake up at their destination—a statement he made back in 2019. “Musk’s rhetoric at We Robot is merely a tired repetition of the same broken promises he made five years ago at Autonomy Day,” said O’Dowd.
Besides showcasing the Cybercab, Musk brought out another autonomous Tesla prototype known as the Robovan that can carry up to 20 people and was presented without details on timeline or pricing. In addition, he unveiled a trove of humanoid robots Tesla is working on, which eventually be available for less than $20,000 or $30,000 and can act as “your own personal R2-D2,” referring to a fictional robot character from Star Wars. Known as Optimus, the robots will be able to babysit, walk dogs, mow lawns and get groceries, claimed Musk, who described them as “the biggest product ever” and one that will be sought after by all “8 billion people on Earth.”