The electric vehicle company was planning on making a less expensive vehicle
Musk’s “Minor” Speech: Tesla is Making an Axi out of a Robot Axis, and Its Failure to Be Detected
Musk has long teased the possibility of a Tesla robotaxi, even showing off a completely covered vehicle during a 2023 event unveiling the company’s third Master Plan. Years earlier, he speculated that Tesla owners would be able to earn revenue from their autonomous cars by sending them out to pick up and drop off passengers.
The announcement came on the same day that Reuters reported that the company had canceled its plans to build a more affordably priced electric vehicle, said to be in the range of $25,000. According to reports, Musk told employees that he wanted to focus on an car that would make the rest of the automotive industry obsolete.
Musk posted a’master plan’ in which the owner of a self-drive car could share it with others. “When true self-driving is approved by regulators,” he wrote, customers would “be able to add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you’re at work or on vacation.” In 2019, Musk told a room full of investors that by the next year, the automaker would have “over a million Tesla cars on the road with full self-driving hardware.” That didn’t happen.
For years, there has been promise fromTesla but not a true self-driving technology. In 2016 the company said that its cars would be shipped with the necessary hardware to drive themselves, which would allow drivers to nap or even send their cars across the country.
But critics argue that he inflates the capabilities of the technology, often with deadly results. Dozens of deaths have been caused by crashes involving Tesla vehicles using autopilot and the self-driving car software. The company is facing numerous wrongful death lawsuits. The US government is investigating the company’s claims around self-driving, and a major recall was announced late last year. The robot seems flawed.
It was not long ago that the company lost its position as the world’s top producer of electric cars to China’s BYD. The company said it produced over three million electric vehicles in the next five years.
The shift in strategy comes as Tesla faces increasing pressure from Chinese automakers, which have been producing more affordable EVs for years. Musk thinks that it would be a death sentence if Chinese companies were allowed to sell cheap electric vehicles in the United States. There are not many Chinese cars for sale in the US due to high tariffs.
Musk denied at least part of the story. “Reuters is lying (again),” he posted, without specifying what the news agency got wrong. Hours later, he seemed to confirm part of the report by posting that Tesla’s next product release would focus on robotaxis.
The last five decades have seen serious growing pains for other self-developed vehicles. A technology that was being talked about as just around the corner proved really hard and expensive. Most major auto and tech manufacturers pledged self-driving software many years ago, but now only a few are left. After billions of dollars in dedicated research and development and more than 7 million miles driven, Google spinoff Waymo only provides paid taxi rides in two cities—Phoenix and San Francisco—though it plans to launch in Austin, Texas, as well as Los Angeles and the wider San Francisco Bay Area soon. General GM’s Cruise has put its entire service on pause because of a clash with California regulators after a crash that injured a pedestrian. In addition to the competitors,Tesla will be even more ambitious in its plans if it wants to start a service everywhere its cars are sold.
