Wanbo is from the Vice Pilot Temple
Smart car reference | Official account AI4Auto
No subversion, no Musk! At the analyst meeting of the latest fiscal quarter, Musk took the initiative to expose tesla's new model next year.
The point is:
There are no pedals, no steering wheel, and it is equipped with an FSD fully automatic driving system.
Isn't this Robotaxi? Yes, this is Tesla's RoboTaxi.
Musk also said: after the launch of the annual large-scale mass production next year, the initial operation will be their own, promised that the taxi price will be lower than the current bus fare.
Can individuals buy it? Didn't say.
However, according to Tesla's consistent pure visual autopilot program and FSD requirements for hardware sensors, there is no essential difference from the current mass-produced S3XY.
Predictably, even if it is sold to individuals, the cost and selling price are not without feasibility.
What kind of car is it?
Musk revealed 3 big details about this new model:
The first is the model design.
Musk said the car will be completely different from Tesla's existing models, and the entire cockpit will have the steering wheel and pedals removed. This means that the new car will be completely out of the human driver's drive and will be taken over by the fully autonomous driving system FSD.
On the exterior level, Musk did not reveal any specific details, saying only that the car will be "quite futuristic."
Although Musk sold the guanzi here, some clues can be found in the promotional video of Musk's tunneling company The Boring Company:
The second is the mass production schedule.
Musk is clear, the goal is to debut in 2023, 2024 to start mass production.
But anyone who knows Musk knows — everything he promises will come true, but whether he can deliver on time is another question.
After all, as early as 2019, Ma Zong opened his mouth: there will be 1 million Tesla RoboTaxi at the end of 2020.
There are also earlier expectations about autonomous driving, what FSD, across the United States... All have delay. But Musk, the man he promised— even if it sounds crazy, he can still achieve it in the end. So today's disclosure of the RoboTaxi model shows that this matter will not be just a "pie".
Regarding the use of this car, Musk also arranged a good place for it:
Dedicated to Robotaxi (driverless taxi).
According to Tesla's plan, this model will also set a new record for the lowest operating costs in the history of the RoboTaxi.
How low can it be?
In the RoboTaxi industry, whether it is Waymo or Baidu Apollo, the object of everyone's analogy is online car-hailing.
But Musk doesn't do things that aren't subversive, and his stance on Tesla's RoboTaxi charges is—
It will be lower than the current subsidized bus ticket fee.
Others engage in Robotaxi are from the online car to grab users, Musk directly from the largest base of bus users to pinch.
Can there still be suspense? Why take the bus when I can take a taxi?
Musk's business acumen is evident from this.
Musk's Robotaxi macro
Speaking of RoboTaxi, Musk already has a timetable and a relatively clear business model.
As early as 2019, Tesla planned to land a fully autonomous RoboTaxi fleet in 2020.
In terms of operating model, Musk said that Tesla models with fully autonomous driving systems are all potential Robotaxi:
In addition to operating the company's vehicles, Tesla private car owners can also connect their own vehicles to the operation system, and when the vehicle is idle, the owner can earn extra money through the private car.
Unfortunately, this seemingly perfect plan did not arrive as scheduled in 2020, and musk has rarely mentioned it in public since then.
The reasons for the delay are complex, but one thing is certain, RoboTaxi has been an important part of Tesla's progress.
And according to the ultimate iteration of FSD, the ultimate goal is Robotaxi. This is also one of the most exciting in Tesla's imagination space. Otherwise, relying solely on building and selling cars, why can we afford the market value of trillions of dollars?
But for Tesla's autopilot and FSD implementation, Musk was too optimistic before.
Including at the 2020 Shanghai World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Musk said that he would be able to achieve L5 level autonomous driving at the end of the year, that is, the level of RoboTaxi.
But so far, the FSD is still in beta testing.
Finally, even Musk himself said in an interview that he knew that self-driving research and development was difficult, but he did not expect it to be so difficult. Since then, there has been little public talk about Robotaxi.
So what does it mean to put RoboTaxi on the agenda now? Or which conditions are ripe?
The first thing to determine is that at the legal level, Tesla has no obstacles to producing specialized robotTaxi vehicles without pedals and steering wheels.
In March, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) revised regulations to eliminate requirements for self-driving car manufacturing companies to come standard with "manual control devices" to meet past safety standards.
Steering wheels and pedals are no longer standard in cars.
In addition, as long as the FSD system meets the policy-certified L4 and above autonomous driving capabilities, Tesla's Robotaxi can be on the road, and commercial access licenses can be issued in both China and the United States.
So in the big background and under the big conditions, Musk's exposure of the RoboTaxi model at this moment is obviously not a temporary intention or another high.
But the biggest challenge is still Tesla technology itself, that is, FSD propulsion itself.
The good news is that at the recent Texas factory opening ceremony, Musk announced that the beta test of the FSD fully autonomous driving system is about to be rolled out in North America, covering almost all Tesla models. At the same time in Europe, the Tesla FSD beta will also push public beta.
This means that FSD is about to enter a broader public beta phase, with larger data enabling faster algorithm iterations, and everything may be faster than expected.
But the bad news is that when the FSD Beta will be publicly tested in China is now far away. Previously, there were special regulations in China, and automakers pushed new features for autonomous driving, intelligent driving or assisted driving, which needed to be reported and reviewed.
The era of barbaric growth earlier is over.
Therefore, whether the Tesla Robotaxi model can be introduced and landed in the Chinese market is not easy to say.
one more thing
Finally, let's take a look at Tesla's operations in the first quarter of this year.
According to the financial report, Tesla's total revenue in Q1 was $18.756 billion, an increase of 81% from $10.389 billion in the same period last year, of which the automotive business revenue was $16.861 billion, an increase of 87% over $9.002 billion in the same period last year.
In terms of profitability, Tesla's overall gross profit margin in Q1 was 29.1%, an increase of 7.8 percentage points over the same period last year, and the gross profit margin of the automobile business was 32.9%, an increase of 6.34 percentage points over the same period last year, both reaching the highest level in history.
In terms of net profit, Tesla Q1 net income attributable to Tesla common shareholders was $3.318 billion, up 658% from $438 million in the year-ago quarter, and adjusted earnings per share of $3.22, higher than analysts' expectations of $2.27.
In terms of production and sales, Tesla produced 305,400 vehicles in Q1, an increase of 69% year-on-year, and delivered 310,100 vehicles, an increase of 68% year-on-year, breaking the quarterly delivery record again.
Affected by the positive earnings report, Tesla's stock price rose 5.1% to $1026.88 after hours in the United States, and as of yesterday's close, Tesla's stock price was $1028.15.
A number of indicators broke records, and more importantly, this is the transcript of the Shanghai factory in the face of the epidemic and the unstable supply chain.
Musk also said at the analyst meeting that although Shanghai has recently been affected by the shutdown, it has now resumed operations, and it expects the Shanghai plant to increase production this year by 60% compared with last year — almost 800,000 vehicles per year.
In addition, Musk also proposed a long-term goal:
At the end of this century, the annual production volume of 20 million vehicles will be achieved.
What level of production is this?
It's almost two Toyotas.
—Ends—
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