Tesla Finally Reveals Musk’s ‘Robotaxi,’ Teases ‘Robovan’ and Dancing Robots
For Tesla‘s latest high-profile event, Elon Musk wanted the Hollywood treatment. On Thursday night, the CEO unveiled a prototype of the auto manufacturer’s “robotaxi” at the “We, Robot” event in Warner Bros. Discovery movie studio lot in Burbank, California.
The vehicle is intended to be fully autonomous, with no human driver required, like other self-driving taxis currently operating in select markets, such as Google‘s Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise fleets. Musk initially announced that the demo of Tesla’s version would take place on Aug. 8, only to delay the presentation by two months, tweeting in July that the reveal was postponed for “an important design change to the front” of the car, and because “extra time allows us to show off a few other things.” In late September, he tweeted that the robotaxi would be “one for the history books.”
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As is typical for Musk, the reveal took place about an hour behind its scheduled time. Before taking the stage, Musk showed off the autonomous driving capabilities of the Robotaxi, or Cybercab, by getting into the sleek silver vehicle with butterfly-style doors and taking it for a ride around the lot.
Musk said that the Cybercab is expected to cost less than $30,000 and would be in production before 2027, while admitting he had a tendency “to be a little optimistic with time frames.” He also said that unsupervised fully autonomous vehicles, the Model 3 and the Model Y, would hit the road in California and Texas next year.
Tesla also rolled out the Robovan, a futuristic train-like bus with no visible wheels that Musk said would seat up to 20 people. “Can you imagine going down the streets and you see this coming toward you?” he told the crowd gathered in Burbank. “That’d be sick.”
For Tesla’s final reveal, Musk debuted the latest version of Optimus, a “humanoid friend” that he said would cost $28,000 to $30,000. While he did not state a date on when the robot would be available, the CEO did cap his speech by displaying a group of Optimus robots dancing to Haddaway’s “What Is Love” and had them serve attendees drinks later in the night.
Notably, while the event was filled with Musk’s ambitious predictions and snazzy reveals, the video presentation began with a lengthy disclaimer that said “forward-looking statments” were “not guarantees.”
Dan O’Dowd, billionaire co-founder of Green Hills Software and founder of the Dawn Project, which campaigns “to ban unsafe software from safety critical systems” and has raised alarms about Tesla’s driver-assistance features, was among those unimpressed. “Tesla is not a player in the robotaxi market because they are prohibited from running on public roads,” O’Dowd said in a statement. “Tesla is limited to yawn-inducing demonstrations in Hollywood studios while its competitors’ robotaxis transport 100,000 paying customers around major American cities every week.”
He also dismissed the Optimus as “a similarly disappointing snoozefest,” adding, “Does this look more like the future or 1950s Disneyland?”
Musk has touted autonomous driving technology as key to Tesla’s future, saying in 2022 that the company is “worth basically zero” if it can’t make self-driving cars. But the automaker has struggled to fulfill his vision of fully autonomous vehicles, continually blowing past his overly optimistic (or simply unfounded) predictions of when Tesla would hit certain benchmarks. In 2016, he claimed a Tesla would be able to drive itself across the U.S. without human assistance by the end of 2017 — eight years later, that still hasn’t happened. Also in 2016, Tesla faked a video demonstration of self-driving technology, according to an engineer who later testified in a lawsuit against the company. Tesla has removed the video from its website.
The concept of a Tesla “robotaxi” first came up in a 2019 presentation during which Musk proclaimed that Teslas equipped with the company’s “Full Self-Driving” (or FSD) software would soon be able to serve as driverless cabs, with owners earning passive income by sending them out into the world to pick up fares. “Next year for sure, we will have over a million robotaxis on the road,” he speculated. That didn’t happen, either. And since then, Tesla’s claims and marketing around its driver-assistance systems have come under investigation by both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Department of Justice. Meanwhile, the company is facing a slew of lawsuits alleging that a third-party injury or death was caused by a Tesla with faulty “self-driving” features engaged. (In a test drive to observe how the technology functions, Rolling Stone found that FSD was prone to frequent and dangerous errors when maneuvering city streets and freeways.) Tesla has fought the suits, maintaining that it is not liable for accidents involving self-driving features because responsibility lies with the driver.
It’s unclear if Musk or Tesla leadership still believe that privately owned Teslas with FSD can eventually be upgraded to serve as autonomous taxis, but the rollout of a “robotaxi” built for that specific purpose seems to suggest they are moving away from that original idea. If the aim is to compete with brands like Waymo, however, Tesla faces an uphill battle: Waymo vehicles travel 17,311 miles between disengagements, moments when the technology fails or a human operator must intervene and take manual control. Tesla owners who publicly compile their FSD driving data, by comparison, find that the latest versions of the software manage just 65 city miles between “critical disengagements,” incidents when they have to take over to prevent an illegal maneuver or collision. Waymo and other driverless taxis currently in operation are equipped with an expensive suite of LiDAR (light detection and ranging) and radar sensors, whereas Tesla has long maintained a “video-only” approach to autonomous driving systems.
“Tesla is years behind Waymo,” O’Dowd tells Rolling Stone. “As usual, Elon Musk is trying to compete in the Tour de France on a tricycle.”
Whether Tesla shareholders are swayed by Musk’s latest song and dance will surely be reflected in movement of the stock price on Friday. Ahead of the robotaxi event, investors were split on its possible outcome. Tesla shares dipped more than eight percent in July when the demo was pushed back to October, indicating that the prospects of the vehicle may drive Tesla to the moon — or see it crash down to earth.
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