- Elon Musk announced on X that Tesla will unveil a robotaxi on August 8
- The news increased the company’s stock price by 3%
- While it’s an exciting new venture, Tesla continues to face tough competition in the market
On Friday (5th April, 2024), Elon Musk announced that Tesla will introduce a ‘robotaxi’ to the world on the 8th of August. The news comes from Musk’s personal X account where he shared a simple post stating “Tesla Robotaxi unveil on 8/8.”
No other details were revealed. However, as a result of this one simple tweet, Tesla’s share price increased by over 3% in extended trading.
The release date comes after a latest controversy when Reuters published a report stating that Musk has scrapped his plans for low-cost vehicles fearing competition from Chinese makers. According to them, three sources close to the matter shared this update.
Elon Musk was not happy with this remark and accused Reuters of lying. Although they didn’t make any remarks about Tesla’s robotaxis, Musk decided this would be the best time to give the world a glimpse of the most anticipated project he has been working on.
Read more: Elon Musk shares a video of Neuralink’s first brain chip patient playing online chess
Rocky road ahead for Tesla amidst stiff competition from Google
Tesla robotaxis are already being tested in San Francisco. However, Tesla isn’t the only one experimenting with self-driving cars—Google’s Waymo seems to be ahead in the game.
Waymo is already running commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in LA, Phoenix, and San Francisco. As per reports, Google will soon also be taking over Austin, Texas which is Tesla’s home base.
Waymo has also signed a multi-year partnership with Uber that will use its robotaxis to deliver food for Uber Eats in Arizona.
In China, the self-driving car industry is dominated by Didi. Other companies like Zoox in the U.S. and Wayve in the U.K. are also testing their self-driving units.
The competition has been so fierce that Apple was forced to shut down its self-driving car project which led to the dismissal of 600 people.
In a market this tough, the biggest problem with Tesla is that Elon Musk has only announced the reveal date. It’s no indication of when we can expect the actual commercial release. For example, Tesla’s fully electric heavy-duty truck, the Semi, was unveiled in 2017. However, it was only in 2022 that it became available to the public.
If this is the sort of timeline Tesla’s self-driving robotaxis are going to follow, it’s very likely to slip far behind in the competition.
Past problems with robotaxis and how Tesla is going to handle it
- Robotaxis by Google’s Waymo was attacked by vandals in the city who are opposed to the use of self-driving cars owing to safety concerns.
- Last October, GM-owned cruise had to suspend its robotaxi service indefinitely after several accidents triggered an investigation from California regulators.
- Tesla’s own self-driving technology has received several criticisms.
Even The National Transportation Safety Board criticized Tesla’s earlier models for lack of safety. Following this, in March 2021, the NHTSA investigated 23 Tesla crashes that were believed to be caused by Autopilot malfunction.
Further investigation revealed that Tesla’s self-driving cars were incapable of detecting traffic signals and stationary vehicles in front of them with 100% accuracy all the time.
Naturally, it was a rough couple of years for the company. However, with a lot of research and tuning, it has finally managed to get the approval to introduce the robotaxi to the public.
To further ensure safety, Musk has made it mandatory for all service and sales staff to install and show a demo of the Full Self-Driving “FSD” option to the customer before handing over the keys. While this will admittedly slow down the delivery process, Elon Musk says that it’s an unavoidable and a necessary safety precaution.
