Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made another striking promise about self-driving cars. With his new prediction, Musk is already looking ahead to the Robotaxi, which Tesla will present next month.
Elon Musk’s bold predictions are now a familiar phenomenon. This time, the billionaire claims that a ride in the new Tesla Robotaxi will be as cheap as a bus ride. According to him, the self-driving taxi will eventually make the bus redundant. Because the Robotaxi is completely self-driving, drivers are no longer needed, which would significantly reduce costs. Add to that the growth of battery efficiency and you apparently arrive at a price of a few euros per ride.
It started with cold buses
The discussion started, as it often does, on Musk’s own platform X, when someone claimed that electric buses wouldn’t work well in cold regions. Musk wouldn’t be Musk if he didn’t publicly dispute that claim. He responded that it depends on the design and that his electric vehicles are also well-suited for freezing conditions. As usual, Musk digressed and stated that his new autonomous taxi service would be cheaper than a bus ride in the future.
Time for a fact check
As with many of his promises, Musk frequently makes statements that are partially true, but leave out just enough details to keep it intriguing while teetering on the edge of misleading. In the case of the bus ticket, Electrek did the math and it points to a similar study conducted by the University of Virginia and the University of Texas, it found that autonomous rides in a Tesla Model 3 cost about twice as much on average as public transportation in New York.
Cheaper than an Uber?
So maybe Musk was exaggerating again, but that doesn’t mean a ride in the Tesla Robotaxi won’t be relatively cheap. It would certainly be cheaper than a ride with an Uber. According to Musk, this last comparison will also no longer apply by then, but that’s besides the point.
Tesla will unveil the Robotaxi at an event in Los Angeles on October 10, although a test car has already been spotted on public roads. One of the big questions is whether the self-driving taxi will still have a steering wheel and pedals, or whether they have been omitted altogether.
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Source: www.bright.nl
