Simply hours after Elon Musk claimed Reuters was “lying” about plans to ditch its $25,000 low price EV and as an alternative focus all its efforts on a robotaxi, the Tesla CEO introduced on X that he would reveal mentioned robotaxi in an occasion on August 8.
The announcement comes as Tesla EV sales have lagged and earnings have fallen, leaving the corporate and its CEO on a seek for one other product to spice up gross sales — or at the least the inventory worth.
Earlier Friday, a Reuters report citing three nameless sources and inside paperwork mentioned that Tesla was abandoning its plan to construct a lower-cost EV and would as an alternative focus sources on a deliberate robotaxi that’s being constructed on the identical small EV platform that was additionally presupposed to energy the lower-cost automobile.
Musk took to X, the social community he owns, and claimed with out proof, that Reuters is “lying.” He didn’t dispute any particular particulars.
Hours later, Musk posted on X {that a} “Tesla Robotaxi” will probably be unveiled August 8.
Experiences have swirled for years that Tesla was engaged on these two autos. However Musk has wavered on whether or not to prioritize a typical automotive or one with no steering wheel or pedals, regardless of not having but produced a completely autonomous automotive, in accordance with descriptions in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk.
The CEO pushed again in mid-2022 towards his engineers’ insistence on referencing a automotive with a steering wheel and pedals. And whilst he pressed forward, lead designer Franz von Holzhausen and engineering VP Lars Moravy saved the extra conventional automotive model alive as a “shadow project,” Isaacson wrote on the time.
Musk has been promising autonomous capabilities in Tesla autos for years. In 2016, he mentioned Tesla would drive itself cross-country by the end of 2017 (it didn’t occur). In 2019, he promised to launch the corporate’s first robotaxis as a part of broader imaginative and prescient for an autonomous ride-sharing network in 2020 (that additionally didn’t occur). A number of years later, he mentioned a devoted robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals would come to market by 2024.
Tesla autos come commonplace with a driver-assistance system branded as Autopilot. For an further $12,000, homeowners should purchase “full self-driving,” or FSD — a function that CEO Elon Musk has promised for years will someday ship full autonomous driving capabilities. Tesla autos are not self-driving. As an alternative, FSD contains quite a lot of automated driving options that also require the motive force to be able to take management always, together with the parking function Summon, in addition to Navigate on Autopilot, an lively steering system that navigates a automotive from a freeway on-ramp to off-ramp, together with interchanges and making lane modifications. The system can be presupposed to deal with steering on metropolis streets.
