On Thursday night, At around 7 pm PDT, Tesla is scheduled to unveil the newest vehicle in its lineup: one that will be able to drive itself. A specially designed Tesla robot taxi – a “Cybertaxi,” in the electric car maker’s lingo – aims to establish the company not so much as an automaker but as a maker of innovative robotics technology. “The thinking at Tesla is almost exclusively in terms of solving for autonomy and being able to activate that autonomy for a gigantic fleet,” CEO Elon Musk told Tesla investors in April.
As Musk takes the stage tomorrow at the Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. movie studio in Burbank, California, and attempts to make that substantial (and difficult!) vision a reality, astute observers should keep an eye out for information on Tesla’s service that extends beyond the vehicle itself. The robot demon will probably be in the details of the robot. Ride-hailing services are logistically complex and governed by state-by-state liability laws and regulations. Robot taxis are sometimes attacked by vandals. To manage a robotaxi fleet, Tesla will have to figure out all those pieces.
Tesla’s robotaxi has been a long time coming. Musk made his first promise about an Uber-like self-driving service in 2019, when he said Tesla would have 1 million robotaxis on the roads by the end of 2020. At the time, the idea was that the automaker would be able to “ flip a switch” to effectively transform Teslas on the road into autonomous robots capable of carrying out their drivers’ commands (including paying fares!) during downtime. Last April, Musk announced that the Cybercab’s official reveal would take place in August, then delayed it after saying the vehicle needed design tweaks.
Now, Tesla has made a purpose-built autonomous electric vehicle, owned and operated by the company itself, more central to its future robotaxi fleet. Musk has compared the business model to a combination of Airbnb and Uber, but maintains, as he said in April, that “there will be a certain number of cars that Tesla owns and operates in the fleet.”
Tesla has shown renderings that represent what a autonomous robotaxi application it might seem. And earlier this year, Tesla’s chief AI officer, Ashok Elluswamy, hinted that the automaker had at least some idea of the challenge ahead, when he acknowledged to investors that Cybercabs will need to be charged, cleaned and kept between the passenger transportation day and night. Who will do that and where? And who will pay for it?
An autonomous transportation service would put Tesla in direct competition with other technology developers with years of advantage. Alphabet subsidiary Waymo says it offers 100,000 paid rides per week in San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles. It plans to launch in Austin, Texas and Atlanta, Georgia, next year. Amazon’s Zoox is testing its specially designed toaster-shaped robotaxi in Las Vegas and has said it will launch an autonomous taxi service later this year.
