On Thursday (April 21), Tesla released the first quarter of 2022 financial report showing that in the first quarter of this year, the company's total revenue was $18.756 billion, an increase of 81% from $10.389 billion in the same period last year, much higher than analysts' expectations of $17.92 billion; non-GAAP net profit in the first quarter was $3.736 billion, an increase of 255% year-on-year.
After record first-quarter earnings, Musk took a bold proposition: launching Tesla Futuristic cars in 2023.
No brakes, pedals and steering wheel
With Tesla officially opening its new auto assembly plant in Austin, Texas, Musk said, "There will be a dedicated Robotaxi." ”
More details were revealed again on Wednesday night's first-quarter earnings call, where Tesla will begin mass production of the futuristic car — the robo-taxi — by 2024, meaning the car will have no brakes, pedals and steering wheel and will be powered by Tesla's fully automatic driving system (FSD).
As for whether Musk's promises can be fulfilled, it is not a list. After all, as early as 2019, Musk said that he would launch a fleet of 1 million self-driving taxis in 2020, and "water" for two years to fry cold rice again, which means that this matter will not be just a "pie".
Robotaxi also had a relatively clear business model before.
In terms of operation model, Musk said that Tesla models with FSDs are potential "Robotaxi": In addition to operating the company's vehicles, Tesla private car owners can connect their vehicles to the operation system, so that car owners can become "slash youth" and earn extra money through private cars.
Unfortunately, this seemingly watertight plan did not arrive as scheduled in 2020. The reason for this can be seen from Musk's April 2020 Tweet, which he said was a big unknown.
At the time, without a steering wheel and pedals, Robotaxi would be considered to have level 5 autonomy. Tesla's current Autopilot is only Level 2, and it still requires humans to monitor the behavior of the car and take over at any time.
There is always a reason for the incident, and what does it mean that Robotaxi is once again put on the agenda by Musk? Or what barriers have been removed?
In March, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) revised regulations to remove the requirement for "manual control devices" that autonomous driving companies have come standard to meet past safety standards. This also means that, from a legal level, Tesla's pedalless, steering-wheel-less Robotaxi vehicles have been fully legalized, and 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, Robotaxi can be on the road, and both China and the United States have issued commercial access licenses that can be charged.
In this positive double context, Musk's commitment is obviously not a temporary intention. It is worth mentioning that at the recent opening ceremony of the Texas Gigafactory, Musk said that the FSD fully autonomous driving system is undergoing beta testing and will be rolled out in North America, covering almost all Tesla models. At the same time, the European region has also gradually pushed Tesla FSD beta beta. This also means that FSD will have larger data to implement the iteration of AI algorithms.
Robotaxi is imagination greater than strength
One of the biggest hurdles Musk has to overcome if he wants to have a fleet of self-driving taxis is reaching level 5 of autonomous driving, in other words, the car can drive itself without anyone driving. This is undoubtedly a fantasy for Tesla.
On the one hand, Tesla has always been a fan of the pure visual route, and the chances of reaching this level by camera + AI computing alone are slim. On the other hand, the FSD beta open to various markets is not L5 automatic driving capability, compared with the use of high-precision maps and radar auxiliary solutions, the system is still unable to achieve a high degree of adaptation in some road conditions (backlight, darkness, specular reflection, etc.), the main reason is the lack of lidar, which is the necessary safety redundancy.
In contrast, the driverless taxi launched by Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, in the downtown area of San Francisco in February this year, although there are some road speed limits of 30 yards, fog and rain can not run and other restrictions, but the most important thing to be able to go on the road trial is the large number of sensors on the roof and Microsoft's high-precision cloud map.
You know, cloud platforms and related technologies can alleviate the processing power required to deal with intensive tasks such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, and Tesla's road to L5 self-driving capabilities is a pain point that needs to be solved urgently. At present, FSD cannot achieve self-driving, which also makes people doubt Tesla's Robotaxi.
Automotive Network Review: The Prospect of Autonomous Driving
With the continuous upgrading of automobile intelligence and electrification, driverless cars have become a new trend in the development of the automotive industry, and the demand for autonomous driving services continues to grow under the impetus of multi-dimensional factors such as "new four modernizations" and social needs. According to iiMedia Research, more than half (57.0%) of the surveyed consumers are supportive of driverless cars. Although driverless cars have not yet been widely promoted, their use areas have been widely distributed, and the penetration rate of driverless cars in the future will gradually increase.
As for whether Tesla can make a breakthrough in the field of automatic driving in the future and introduce domestic, on the one hand, it is necessary to enhance the self-learning ability of FSD to the environment and adapt to more road conditions, on the other hand, it may face problems in policies and regulations when entering China. For Tesla, which is not ready for everything, FSD will undoubtedly face more obstacles in china.