Tesla plans to delay the reveal event for its robotaxi to October, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the decision.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk previously said the event would happen on August 8. According to Bloomberg, teams working on the project, potentially called the “Cybercab,” need more time to build additional prototypes.
Tesla’s robotaxi event
For years, Tesla has floated plans for an Uber competitor that uses a fleet of self-driving Teslas. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Tesla would reveal its purpose-built robotaxi in August, but that may be postponed.
For years, the company has floated plans for an autonomous ride-hailing service that would rival Uber, Lyft and Waymo (Alphabet’s robotaxi firm). That fleet would be made up of both customer-owned Teslas and purpose-built Tesla robotaxis. The latter is what Musk said we’d see in August.
But Tesla left it unclear what exactly it would display at the event. Would it be a functional robotaxi that can actually navigate the world? Or would it be just a static design concept? When does Tesla plan to actually launch the taxi service? We don’t really know.
The big question looming over Tesla’s self-driving plans is whether it can actually create an autonomous car and deploy it safely. The automaker has for years said that self-driving Teslas are right around the corner, but it has yet to deliver on that promise. That may become a problem, as much of Tesla’s enormous market capitalization rests on the idea that it isn’t just another automaker, but rather an AI and tech company.
Tesla shares slid some 6% on the news before rebounding slightly.
Some experts doubt that Tesla’s approach of using just cameras for autonomous driving will ever work. By contrast, Waymo, which already ferries paying passengers around in driverless vehicles, relies on cameras as well as radar sensors, lidar units and high-definition maps of the areas it operates in.
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