A new report says Tesla could unveil its long-awaited robotaxi as soon as Oct. 10.
Quoting “people familiar with the matter, Industry publication Automotive News reports that Tesla now plans a reveal event “at Warner Bros. Discovery’s movie studio in the Los Angeles area” that day.
A Critical Project for Tesla
Tesla has had a chaotic 2024.
Americans are buying more electric vehicles (EVs) than ever – a record 330,000 last quarter. But the news hasn’t been as good for the traditional EV market leader.
Tesla saw its market share slip below 50% in the second quarter as traditional automakers – almost all of them now selling more than one EV – took slices of the pie. The company’s stock price can fluctuate day to day but is down more than 16% year-over-year as it steadily loses ground in its traditional market.
CEO Elon Musk has responded by pitching the company to investors as less a car company and more an autonomy company. The robotaxi is central to that push.
Tesla has canceled plans to build a sub-$25,000 EV – the long-planned Model 2 – in favor of its self-driving taxi project. The company has also abandoned plans to build a car’s frame from a single cast part even as Toyota has moved into the same so-called “gigacasting” process.
Tesla has delayed a planned update of its best-selling Model Y and dramatically slowed the growth of its Supercharger EV charging network even as other automakers and rival networks adopt that technology.
Dramatically pulling back from other projects, Tesla has invested heavily in the robotaxi.
Others Have Struggled to Make Autonomous Taxis Work
Musk has long pitched Tesla’s autonomy efforts as an eventual earnings source for Tesla owners. Owners, he said, could someday let their Teslas work as taxis when they didn’t need to drive them, bringing in money.
But the company also plans its own fleet of autonomous taxis. Musk told investors in April the future company would be “a combination of Airbnb and Uber, meaning that there will be some number of cars that Tesla owns itself and operates in the fleet.”
Other companies, however, have tried this and failed to find success. The New York Times notes, “Tesla’s technology will face stiff competition from Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google; ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft; and Amazon’s self-driving business, Zoox. Carmakers including General Motors, which owns Cruise, are also pursuing autonomous driving, along with Chinese tech and auto companies like Baidu and BYD.”
None of them have seen the wild success Musk envisions.
Tesla’s approach is different. Electrek notes, “most other self-driving ride services, like Waymo and Cruise, focus on making their system work in geo-fenced city areas using mapping,” but Tesla believes its cars will be able to function outside mapped areas, “meaning that it could virtually drive wherever without pre-mapping the area or even having an internet connection.”
