Tesla has announced a new unveiling date for its self-driving robotaxi, after its reveal was delayed for unknown reasons.
Originally due to break cover on August 8, Tesla’s robotaxi – understood to be called Cybercab – is now slated to be revealed on October 10, CEO Elon Musk told investors today as a part of the company’s second quarter financial results call.
Mr Musk said the delay was due to “important changes” he wanted to be made to the robotaxi, without elaborating on what they are.
“I wanted to make some important changes that I think would improve the robotaxi, and we’re also going to show off a couple of other things,” said Mr Musk.
“Moving it back a few months allowed us to improve the robotaxi as well as add in a couple of other things for the product unveil.”
It appears unlikely the robotaxi will enter mass production at Tesla’s Texas factory this year, as predicted by Mr Musk in April 2022.
We don’t know much about the Tesla robotaxi, apart from what has been pieced together from previous reports and teasers by the company.
It has been claimed the robotaxi will be based on the same platform as Tesla’s reportedly cancelled entry-level electric vehicle (EV), which was tipped to launch in 2025 and start at US$25,000 (A$37,800).
During a video uploaded by Tesla to X (formerly Twitter) in May, a brief clip shows the front seats are effectively one unit, separated only by a fold-down armrest.
Later on in the video, we’re shown the basic concept structure of what’s understood to be the robotaxi – though there appear to be two separate front seats. It’s possible this is Tesla’s take on the old-school split bench.
It’ll reportedly go without a steering wheel – due to being a fully autonomous vehicle – but also appears to omit any rear seats, limiting the number of occupants it can hold.
When asked when the Tesla robotaxi will complete its first public ride, Mr Musk said it depends on when the company’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) autonomous systems are released in full.
“I guess that’s really just a question [of] when do I expect we can do unsupervised Full Self-Driving.
“It’s difficult. My predictions on this have been overly optimistic in the past.
“Based on the current trends, it seems as though we should get miles between interventions far enough in excess of humans that you could do unsupervised possibly by the end of this year. If we cannot do it, next year.”
Tesla’s semi-autonomous driving systems – available across its range of core vehicles – have been facing increased scrutiny overseas.
In 2019, Mr Musk said there would be “over a million Tesla cars on the road with Full Self-Driving hardware” by the middle of 2020, capable of allowing the driver to go to sleep behind the wheel.
After first only being available to US ‘beta’ testers in September 2021, Full Self-Driving (also known as FSD) became publicly available to all Tesla vehicles in the US capable of running the system in November 2022 – without road safety regulator approval.
Tesla markets Full Self-Driving – technically a Level 2 autonomous driving system, despite the name – as having the ability to accelerate, brake and steer the car itself, with the system claimed to be capable of navigating, changing lanes and following road signal directions.
Teslas with FSD were soon recalled in February 2023 due to concerns they weren’t adequately adhering to traffic safety laws, with an over-the-air update rolled out to resolve the failure.
FSD is still without regulatory approval in the US, despite its beta tag being removed in the back end of last year.
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