You can take a nap while traveling and wake up at your destination – promises Tesla’s CEO, but experts are skeptical that such cars will soon carry passengers. The new autonomous vehicle has no steering wheel and will reportedly cost less than $30,000.
After years of promises, Tesla has unveiled a car that CEO Elon Musk says will be able to drive itself without human supervision. According to Musk, the vehicle will increase the company’s stock market value by a trillion dollars. The “robotaxis” — which Musk referred to as a “cybertaxi” — will cost less than $30,000 and be available before 2027, he said. He admitted, “I tend to be a little optimistic.” The product has no steering wheel or pedals, it self-driving taxi prototype that Musk has staked Tesla’s future on.Musk promised that the stainless-steel-looking vehicle would be able to take passengers to any destination without human intervention, something other companies have only managed in a few locations, such as Phoenix and San Francisco.
The much-anticipated unveiling event at the Warner Bros. studio near Los Angeles began nearly an hour late because, according to Musk, one of the invited guests had a medical emergency. Tesla’s existing cars, including the Model 3 and Model Y, will be able to offer ride-hailing robots in Texas and California long before the new vehicle is released, Musk said. However, many experts doubt that such Tesla taxis will hit the roads anytime soon. Musk has said for years that the company is months away from launching the Robotaxi service. In addition, Tesla’s autonomous driving technology offered today makes fundamental errors that require drivers to intervene to avoid accidents or traffic violations.
Still, Musk’s supporters and fans believe that Robotaxi will launch a profitable business that will more than offset Tesla’s recent struggles in the electric car market, as the company has lost significant market share to older automakers. According to Musk, people will be able to buy Robotaxis for personal use and earn extra money by having their vehicle deliver passengers — the automotive equivalent of Airbnb’s short-term home rentals.
Other analysts and self-driving experts say there is little evidence that Tesla is close to perfecting the technology and turning a profit from it. A car that can function as a self-driving taxi “is still years away, with many technological hurdles, safety tests and regulatory approvals still in its way,” said Garrett Nelson, senior equity analyst at CFRA Research. “If this technology works well, it will completely change car ownership and mobility.” said Shay Natarajan, a partner at Mobility Impact Partners, a private equity firm that invests in sustainable transportation but does not own shares in Tesla.However, Natarajan questioned whether Tesla’s technology, which relies solely on cameras for navigation, would be capable in all conditions. work as Musk promised Almost every other automaker uses laser sensors to detect people and objects.
For Tesla investors, whose shares are trading at about the same price as at the beginning of the year, much was riding on the event. Its status as the world’s most valuable car company was based on Musk’s claim that the company would sell 20 million cars a year by the end of the decade, twice what Toyota sold and more than 10 times what Tesla sold last year. But recently, Tesla’s sales growth has slowed, and Musk has de-emphasized that goal, instead staking the company’s future on self-driving technology. Those who don’t believe Tesla will be able to overcome the hurdles to fully autonomous driving “shouldn’t invest in the company,” Musk said in April.
Many analysts are skeptical that even if Tesla can perfect the technology, it will still generate the kind of profits Musk is forecasting. Tom Narayan, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, estimated that self-driving taxis would generate $1.7 billion in vehicle sales worldwide by 2040, but Tesla will only have a slice of the market. “This will not happen in large numbers any time soon,” he added.
Tesla also presented the latest version of its Optimus humanoid robot. In the presentation video, the robots served drinks, played board games with children and unloaded food from a car. “This is going to be the greatest product ever,” Musk said. In a surprise move, Tesla also unveiled an autonomous “robovan” capable of transporting 20 people. “We’re going to build that,” Musk said. But the company disappointed some investors who they hoped to see a prototype Tesla car priced lower than existing models, and Tesla said such a car would go on sale next year.
Tesla already allows the owners of its electric vehicles to use a system it calls full self-driving with a monthly subscription. However, the company says drivers using it should be ready to intervene at any time if the software fails. Accidents attributed to earlier versions of Tesla software have sparked numerous lawsuits and an investigation by the US Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The agency says the technology doesn’t adequately ensure drivers are paying attention. In a report released in April, the agency linked hundreds of accidents and at least 29 fatal accidents to the use of Tesla’s driver assistance systems.
Musk has long promised that Tesla’s vehicles will be able to operate without human intervention. Because of his unfulfilled promises, Mich. The Oakland County Pension Fund and other shareholders filed a class action lawsuit alleging that he misled them about the company’s technology in violation of securities laws. But a federal judge in California ruled in Tesla’s favor last month, citing laws that allow executives to make optimistic statements even if they later turn out to be untrue. The ruling gives Musk wide latitude.
Tesla isn’t the only company working on self-driving taxis. In China, the tech giant Baidu is testing autonomous taxis on public roads. Waymo, part of the Google holding company, has been operating a driverless taxi service for years. It recently said its cars provide more than 100,000 rides a week in San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles. Cruise, a unit of General Motors, recently resumed testing driverless taxis after one of its cars ran over a pedestrian in San Francisco last year. And Amazon-owned Zoox is testing a driverless van without a steering wheel and plans to launch a paid service.
Analysts say it will likely be years before these companies or Tesla start a profitable taxi service in cities. And even then, significant teams of engineers, mechanics, cleaners and others will be needed to operate such services. “Elon’s Robotaxi represents a potential paradigm shift in the transportation industry,” said Karl Brauer, senior analyst at iSeeCars, a used-car shopping site, “but it won’t happen overnight.”
Source: sg.hu
