Tesla will unveil its much-promised robotaxi on August eight, Elon Musk simply posted on X. The upcoming autonomous automobile is alleged to be constructed on Tesla's next-generation automobile platform.
The announcement got here on the identical day that Reuters reported that the corporate scrapped plans to construct a extra reasonably priced electrical automobile, stated to be within the $25,000 vary. Musk advised staff that as a substitute of constructing a mass-market electrical automobile, he needed to focus completely on an autonomous automobile that will make different autos out of date.
Musk has lengthy teased the potential for a Tesla robotaxi, even exhibiting off a totally lined automobile throughout a 2023 occasion unveiling the corporate's third Grasp Plan. Years earlier, he speculated that Tesla house owners might earn income from their self-driving vehicles by sending them out to select up and drop off passengers.
This might be the so-called “Tesla Community” as described in Musk's Grasp Plan Half Two. “You'll additionally have the ability to add your automobile to Tesla's shared fleet with only a faucet of a button on the Tesla telephone app,” he wrote, “and also you'll have the ability to earn it whilst you're at work or on trip, considerably offsetting and typically probably exceeding the month-to-month value of the mortgage or lease.”
These plans grew to become even grander just a few years later. “By the center of subsequent yr, we'll have over one million Tesla vehicles on the street with full self-driving hardware,” Musk stated in 2019. Tesla's full self-driving (FSD) function could be so dependable that the driving force would might “go to mattress,” he added. (Teslas with the corporate's FSD software program usually are not autonomous, and drivers could be nicely suggested to not sleep of their vehicles.)
Musk's repeated claims that self-driving autos have been solely “a yr” away at the moment are a part of Tesla lore. Its supporters level to the success of Autopilot after which FSD as proof that, whereas its guarantees might not precisely line up with actuality, it’s nonetheless on the forefront of a societal shift from human-powered autos to AI-piloted ones. He even makes a military of humanoid robots to show that the expertise is formally agnostic.
However critics say he inflates the expertise's capabilities, typically with lethal outcomes. There have been tons of of accidents involving Tesla autos utilizing FSD and Autopilot and dozens of deaths. The corporate faces quite a few wrongful loss of life lawsuits. The US authorities is investigating the corporate's self-driving claims, and a serious recall was introduced late final yr. Even the robotic seems to be damaged.
A robotaxi occasion in August is actually according to Tesla's behavior of presenting a minimum of two loud occasions annually. Final yr it was the Grasp Plan and the Cybertruck supply occasion. Now, we learn about a minimum of half of what's in retailer for the corporate in 2024.