Merely hours after Elon Musk accused Reuters of spreading falsehoods regarding Tesla’s abandonment of its $25,000 affordable electric vehicle (EV) project in favor of concentrating on a robotaxi, the Tesla CEO declared via X that he would showcase the robotaxi at an event scheduled for August 8.
This revelation emerges against a backdrop of declining Tesla EV sales and diminishing profits, prompting the company and its CEO to explore new products to rejuvenate sales or, at the very least, enhance the company’s stock value.
On the same day, Reuters released a report based on three unnamed sources and internal documents, stating that Tesla had decided to halt its efforts to produce a more affordable EV. Instead, it would allocate its resources towards developing a robotaxi. This robotaxi is to be developed using the same compact EV platform initially intended for the budget-friendly vehicle.
Musk, utilizing X—a platform he owns—vehemently denied Reuters’ claims as baseless, though he did not counter any specific points made in the report.
Shortly after this confrontation, Musk announced on X that the “Tesla Robotaxi” would be introduced on August 8.
Tesla Robotaxi unveil on 8/8
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2024
Reports have swirled for years that Tesla was working on these two vehicles. But Musk has wavered on whether to prioritize a typical car or one with no steering wheel or pedals, despite not having yet produced a fully autonomous car, according to descriptions in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk.
The CEO pushed back in mid-2022 against his engineers’ insistence on referencing a car with a steering wheel and pedals. And even as he pressed ahead, lead designer Franz von Holzhausen and engineering VP Lars Moravy kept the more traditional car version alive as a “shadow project,” Isaacson wrote at the time.
Musk has been promising autonomous capabilities in Tesla vehicles for years. In 2016, he said Tesla would drive itself cross-country by the end of 2017 (it didn’t happen). In 2019, he promised to launch the company’s first robotaxis as part of broader vision for an autonomous ride-sharing network in 2020 (that also did not happen). A few years later, he said a dedicated robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals would come to market by 2024.
Tesla vehicles come standard with a driver-assistance system branded as Autopilot. For an additional $12,000, owners can buy “full self-driving,” or FSD — a feature that CEO Elon Musk has promised for years will one day deliver full autonomous driving capabilities. Tesla vehicles are not self-driving. Instead, FSD includes a number of automated driving features that still require the driver to be ready to take control at all times, including the parking feature Summon, as well as Navigate on Autopilot, an active guidance system that navigates a car from a highway on-ramp to off-ramp, including interchanges and making lane changes. The system is also supposed to handle steering on city streets.
