As we all know by now, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk is always hinting at exciting new technology or vehicles on the horizon. During Tesla’s latest earnings call this week, the company said its highly efficient Robotaxi will arrive in 2024.
While this isn’t the first time Elon Musk has mentioned the Robotaxi, it’s the first time we received more information. And while we still don’t know much at this point, he did make some bold claims, as usual.
Tesla will start production on an all-new Robotaxi in 2023, which it hopes will be ready for mass production and can hit the streets in 2024. But, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the comment is that this full self-driving taxi won’t have a steering wheel or any pedals. So, even if a human needs to take over, one can’t. Here’s what Musk said during the call:
“We are working on a new vehicle that I alluded to at the Giga Texas factory opening, which is a dedicated robotaxi. It is going to be highly optimized for autonomy—meaning it will not have steering wheel or pedals.”
Tesla has several exciting innovations it plans to integrate into the Robotaxi. Musk went on to say that “it is fundamentally optimized to achieve the lowest fully considered cost per mile or km when counting everything” and that it’ll offer the “lowest cost per ride that customers have ever experienced” and cheaper than taking a bus or other public transit.
Those are some bold claims, especially considering Tesla’s full self-driving (FSD) software is still a work-in-progress. It’s been “coming soon” for a while now, but hopefully, by 2024, it’ll be ready for primetime. It’s worth stating that Musk previously said in 2019 that a Robotaxi of some sort would arrive in 2020, but obviously, that never happened.
During the call, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk explained how difficult and complex full self-driving software is. The process has been challenging and requires the company to solve real-world artificial intelligence. In closing, Musk said, “I think we will achieve that this year.”
As usual, we’ll have to wait and see, but the Robotaxi sure sounds exciting.
