After watching Tesla’s short Robot Taxi event, it feels like Elon Musk is running a different version of Tesla in his head than what the actual company is working on.
Tesla is a relatively small automaker, and its biggest accomplishments to date have been scaling up the Model 3 production and making one of the first really successful EVs. On the tech side, it makes an above-average infotainment system and seems to be working on some ambitious self-driving technology, but what’s out in the world already has proven to be dangerous, mislabelled as full self-driving, and behind the widely ambitious schedule set by Musk.
I’ve fallen for the Musk grift before. When I started this job in 2018, I quickly hopped on the Tesla beat and covered it with a lot of optimism. However, in the years since, I’ve been burned by the company missing deadlines more times than I can count. For instance, when Musk first pulled back the curtain on the robot taxi idea in 2019, he claimed that by 2020, there would be a million Teslas on the road with the necessary hardware to operate as a robot taxi. He then claimed that Tesla’s cars would be able to make its customers money since they would be able to operate as a cab. There was no mention of that at last night’s ‘We, Robot’ event.
With all that said, at the event, Musk claimed that Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y could drive themselves in Texas and California next year, pending regulations. There’s no mention of using Tesla vehicles capable of self-driving (the Model Y, 3 and the newly announced Cyber-cab) in the Las Vegas Tesla tunnel, even though that seems like the perfect use case for them right now. Then, Musk hopes the new Cyber-cab will become available before 2027. The caveat here is that Tesla hasn’t shipped a car on time in years, so I wouldn’t bank on the company hitting this deadline. He also squeezed in that the Model S, X and Cybertruck will also get self-driving upgrades, but since he sort of mentioned that offhand, it doesn’t seem to me that those vehicles will be included in the self-driving taxi program in Texas or California for some reason.
The Cyber-cab is one of the new cars of the night. It’s a small two-seater coupe with no steering wheel, pedals, or physical buttons of any kind. In a brief demo by MKBHD, he points out that there aren’t even buttons on the doors to roll down the windows. What it does have is a roughly 24-inch touch screen in the centre of the cab, so in theory, you’ll use that to control the windows and AC. The demo unit also played a lot of movie trailers, suggesting that Tesla is aiming for it to be an in-car movie screen.
The most interesting aspect of this car to me is that it uses inductive wireless charging instead of Tesla’s existing Supercharger network. This makes sense on one hand because there will be no driver in this car to get out and plug the car in, but as the world struggles to get enough fast EV chargers, I have very little faith that Tesla will be able to roll out enough wireless chargers by 2026 to make this possible. There was also no mention of how expensive adding an inductive charger to your home might be. This is tech that has been tested by electric bus networks around the world, but since cities already have depots and buses run on established lines, this always made a bit more sense to me. With the Cyber-cab, I worry this will be a near-impossible challenge to overcome in the timeline Tesla has set out. On top of that, it raises another issue of how the existing Model 3 and Y self-driving cabs will get charged. Will Tesla operate these vehicles like Waymo and have its own depots where it can recharge them? Will it allow customers to enter their cars into the robot taxi pool and then rely on those people to keep their cars topped up? There are too many questions and no easy answers surrounding this project, but I expect Telsa to take the Waymo route to get this project off the ground.
The Cyber-cab is expected to be below $30,000 USD at its lowest, which is around $41,000 CAD. That said, as we saw with the Cyber truck, the price will likely change in the years leading up to launch, or the company will only launch a high-end version with a more expensive price tag. At the reveal, even the Cybertruck was supposed to start at roughly $54,000 CAD, but years later, once it started hitting city streets, the cheapest model you could actually buy was $83,000 CAD. As of the time of writing, the only model you can get in Canada is a high-end version costing around $137,000.
Beyond the two-seater cab, Tesla also revealed a robotic van that’s more in line with the self-driving concepts we’ve seen for years by companies like Honda. Musk says it can hold up to 20 people, but that’s if they’re all standing. From what I could gather, the demo unit at the event had roughly 12 seats in it.
On top of that, Elon once again showed off the Optimus robot, but from what I’ve seen online, all it did at the event was walk around and wave at people. One was stationed at a bar set, but it didn’t serve drinks, it just waved at people.
The event was held at a Warner Bros lot in California and featured 50 demo vehicles. However, The Verge reports that there are rumours of Tesla mapping the area before the event, so it’s unclear if these cars were running on the software the company plans to launch with or were set up with some sort of pre-planned demo mode. It’s also worth noting that Tesla plans to make its robot taxis cheap because, as Musk claimed on stage, they won’t be using expensive hardware. It’s a little unclear what exactly he means by this, but it does seem to align with Telsa’s existing view of using cameras instead of Lidar sensors, which the rest of the fully autonomous self-driving companies like Waymo and Crusie rely on.
Oh, and after all of that, it should be mentioned that at the beginning of the presentation, there was a huge block of fine print that shot up briefly outlining how basically nothing Musk says should be taken as anything more than a forward-looking statement. He’s been burned by regulators before regarding this because a lot of the things he shares at these events or online never seem to come true exactly as he’s said them, so this is likely just the company’s lawyers covering their bases, but it is interesting since you’d never see something like this at an Apple or Google event. You can read all the fine print below;
“Certain statements in this presentation, including, but not limited to, statements relating to the development, strategy, ramp, production and capacity, demand and market growth, cost, pricing and profitability, investment, deliveries, deployment, availability and other features and improvements and timing of existing and future Tesia products and services; statements regarding operating margin, operating profits, spending and liquidity: and statements regarding expansion, improvements and/or ramp and related timing at our factories are “forward-looking statements* within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform of 1995. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions with respect to the future, are based on management’s current expectations, involve certain risks and uncertainties, and are not guarantees. Future results may differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statement. The following important factors, without limitation, could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements: the risk of delays in launching and/or manufacturing our products, services, and features cost-effectively; our ability to build and/or grow our products and services, sales, delivery, installation, servicing and charging capabilities and effectively manage this growth; consumers’ demand for products and services based on artificial intelligence, robotics and automation, electric vehicles, and ride-hailing services generally and our vehicles and services specifically, as well as our ability to successfully and timely develop, introduce, and scale such products and services; the ability of suppliers to deliver components according to schedules, prices, quality and volumes acceptable to us, and our ability to manage such components effectively; any issues with lithium-ion cells or other components manufactured at our factories; our ability to ramp our factories in accordance with our plans; our ability to procure supply of battery cells, including through our own manufacturing: risks relating to international expansion; any failures by Tesla products to perform as expected or if product recalls occur; the risk of product liability claims; competition in the automotive, transportation, and energy product and services markets; our ability to maintain public credibility and confidence in our long-term business prospects; our ability to manage risks relating to our various product financing programs; the status of government and economic incentives for electric vehicles and energy products; our ability to attract, hire and retain key employees and qualified personnel; our ability to maintain the security of our information and production and product systems; our compliance with various regulations and laws applicable to our operations and products, which may evolve from time to time; risks relating to our indebtedness and financing strategies; and adverse foreign exchange movements. More information on potential factors that could affect our financial results is included from time to time in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings and reports, including the risks identified under the section captioned “Risk Factors” in our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on January 26, 2024 and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-0. Tesla disclaims any obligation to update information contained in these forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.”
Image source: Tesla
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