Tesla to finally reveal long-awaited Robotaxis
- Tesla is expected to reveal its anticipated Robotaxi vehicles at an event in Hollywood.
- The cars are expected to be two-seater EVs that may not have steering wheels or pedals and are likely solely self-driving.
- The reveal could be a stunt to drive the struggling Tesla stock up if commercialisation plans are not part of the reveal.
Elon Musk’s Tesla is set to reveal its long-in-the-pipeline self-driving “Robotaxis” in a live-streamed event on Thursday 10th October 2024. You can catch the live stream on the Tesla YouTube channel or in the X stream embedded below, but you’ll have to get up at 4:00 AM to catch it live if you live in South Africa.
The stream itself is titled “We, Robot” and will reportedly be filmed live at the Warner Bros. Discovery movie studios in California.
Reports about a self-driving EV that can be used to taxi around paying customers have emerged over the last several years, with no actual official word from Tesla, until a Reuters report revealed that the automaker would be focusing its efforts on the Robotaxi, also called the “cybercab.”
Owner Musk then quickly set a reveal date on 8th August, but this date was pushed back to 10th October in order for Tesla to make “an important design change to the front,” TechCrunch reports. There is no reveal yet of what the actual Tesla Robotaxi will look like, but it is expected to be a smaller, two-seater vehicle.
The vehicle is expected to be similar to the Cybertruck, with a shiny, stainless steel exterior and angular edges. Musk has also pushed for the vehicle to be built without a steering wheel or pedals, meaning that it will be completely programmed to drive itself and its passengers to and from their destinations.
Detractors have long used the absence of the long-cooking Robotaxi as an example of Musk’s want to over-promise and under-deliver. While Musk has promised and launched a number of futuristic, headline-grabbing technologies, few are ever tangibly released.
We’re still waiting for an announcement for when the Tesla AI robot will go on sale, even though the company said in April that sales would begin “at the end of the year.”
And it is expected that the reveal of the Tesla Robotaxi might not include a plan to see the cars hit the market.
In fact, some publications are pointing to the design choices of the Robotaxi as being unrealistic and not meeting US vehicle safety standards (no steering wheel will do that) and that the reveal of the new vehicles may just be a stunt to drive Tesla’s struggling stock a bit higher instead of an actual product to be sold.
The fact that the event will take place at a Hollywood studio also lends credence to the “stunt show” theory.
Tesla needs a win right now, with mounting production costs of the Cybertruck and disappointing vehicle sales results for the 3rd quarter causing the stock to slump in recent weeks. Tesla also announced this week its fifth recall of around 27 000 Cybertrucks this year alone, which will not be cheap for the company and will earn no good favour from its customers.
However, if Musk does announce something big and concrete at the event, like for example, a partnership with Uber which is increasingly looking into automated vehicles, then all the naysayers will have less to celebrate.