For over a decade, Elon Musk has been vocal about Tesla’s plans to introduce autonomous robotaxis, predicting a future where Tesla cars drive themselves without human intervention.
While the dream of self-driving Tesla taxis has yet to materialize, the company is set to unveil the design of its autonomous cabs on October 10, 2024, at the “We, Robot” event in Los Angeles. The announcement comes after years of bold claims, missed deadlines, and growing skepticism from industry experts.
The unveiling is highly anticipated by Tesla fans and investors alike, many of whom remain optimistic about the company’s ability to revolutionize the ride-hailing market. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas has outlined a potential timeline for the rollout of Tesla’s robotaxi service, estimating that initial commercial introductions could happen by late 2025 or 2026. At the upcoming event, attendees are expected to see and possibly experience Tesla’s “cybercab” on a closed course, which would demonstrate the company’s self-driving capabilities.
Despite the excitement surrounding the event, Tesla’s strategy has faced scrutiny. Tesla’s Autopilot and Full-Self Driving (FSD) technology, key components of its autonomous vehicle ambitions, have sparked concerns about whether the company is truly ready to deliver fully driverless vehicles. Meanwhile, competitors in the autonomous vehicle space have already made significant strides. Alphabet-owned Waymo operates a commercial robotaxi service in several US cities, logging over 100,000 paid rides per week as of August 2024. Amazon’s Zoox and China-based Pony.ai and Baidu have also launched commercial robotaxi services.
Analysts see significant potential in the robotaxi market, with Raymond James predicting $50 billion in annual bookings by 2030. However, with the growth of electric vehicle (EV) sales slowing in the US, there is added pressure on Tesla to succeed in its pivot to autonomy.
Jonas has suggested that Tesla could adopt a “dual” approach to autonomous ride-sharing: one being a fully autonomous, app-based cybercab service, and the other a supervised FSD rideshare service where a human driver is present. Experts believe that the supervised rideshare model could see broader use in the near term while fully autonomous services may take longer to scale.
With input from CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, and Tesla Rati.
