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Elon Musk unveiled his “CyberCab” at a highly anticipated event for Tesla investors, but he expected the self-driving taxi to cost less than $30,000 and was vague on key details. .
“The cost of self-driving transportation is going to be so low that you can think of it as personalized mass transit,” Musk said Thursday after entering Hollywood at Warner Bros. Studios in Los Angeles in a steering wheelless CyberCab. I think so,” he said. wheels and pedals.
Tesla has also unveiled a prototype of a 20-seater self-driving car called the RoboVan, so robotaxi production is likely to begin by 2027, but the service still needs regulatory approval. There are some caveats, he said.
Since Tesla announced “Robotaxi Day” on April 5, the company’s stock has soared 45% in anticipation of the announcement. Musk said the company’s pivot to autonomous driving and artificial intelligence could give the company a valuation of $5 trillion, about seven times its current market value.
However, the stock fell nearly 9% in early trading on Friday.
After months of delays, Mr. Musk’s presentation started nearly an hour late and ended in less than 30 minutes with Optimus, an autonomous humanoid robot, dancing in what looked like a giant aquarium.
“I think this is going to be the biggest product of any kind ever,” Musk said, adding that at scale the humanoid robot would be available for less than $30,000.
However, Musk did not provide details about the technology behind robotaxi or how it would reduce the cost of self-driving cars.
The robotaxi project has been a long time coming, but the biggest omission for investors is that Musk is looking to revive his aging product portfolio with a more affordable $25,000 price tag, known informally as the Model 2. The company was unable to announce an electric vehicle.
Garrett Nelson, an analyst at CFRA Research, said he was disappointed by the lack of clarity on Tesla’s near-term product roadmap. “We believe this event did little to change the uncertain medium-term earnings outlook,” he said.
Mr. Musk has repeatedly failed to meet his goal of rolling out self-driving taxis, first promising fully autonomous taxis from Los Angeles to New York by the end of 2017. In 2019, it predicted that there would be 1 million robotaxis on the road by the next year.
He said Thursday that unsupervised rides using the company’s self-driving software could be available in Texas and California starting next year.
Many analysts believe it will take several more years for Tesla to deploy robotaxis, given regulatory hurdles and questions about the safety of its self-driving technology, which uses cameras and AI to steer vehicles. There is. Rivals like Waymo and China’s Baidu rely on LIDAR, a laser-based sensor, and high-resolution maps to understand what’s going on around a vehicle.
Analysts at Jefferies said Musk has not provided “verifiable evidence” of advances in Tesla’s self-driving technology. That makes it “difficult to assess the feasibility of the goals outlined at the event, given that there is no precedent for achieving higher levels of autonomy using a vision-only approach,” they wrote. added.
In recent years, Mr. Musk has tried to persuade investors to value his company less as an electric car maker and more as a maker focused on self-driving and AI.
Tesla’s car sales still account for 82% of its total sales, but have declined in the face of increased competition. With Chinese companies offering more affordable EV products, Tesla has been forced to lower prices.
In the latest quarter, car deliveries rose 6.4% from a year earlier, rebounding for the first time this year, albeit slightly below Wall Street expectations.
