On April 6, Musk announced on X that Tesla will release a driverless taxi (Robotaxi) on August 8, which has been promised for many years.
Elon Musk has long been a legend in the tech industry, leading Tesla, which has not only achieved great success in the field of electric vehicles, but has also set its sights on the development of self-driving technology. Among them, the Robotaxi project has been attracting much attention. However, this plan seems to have been "drawn" for many years.
Roboxi's ambitions
As early as 2016, Musk unveiled the second chapter of Tesla's grand plan, which included the Robotaxi project as an important goal of Tesla's development. In this idea, Tesla will not only operate its own fleet, but also allow Tesla owners' cars to join the shared fleet. Users can summon Tesla Robotaxi through the software, without the need for a driver, and let the car "do the work" by itself, so as to earn income.
In 2019, Musk further refined the Robotaxi plan, saying that it would be similar to online car-hailing and car-sharing. He even predicted that Robotaxi would be mass-produced in 2024 and that it would be fully autonomous, throwing away the steering wheel or pedals.
Technological progress and challenges
Tesla's FSD (Full Self-Driving) technology is the key to making Robotaxi a reality. After years of development, FSD officially took off the hat of "testing" in 2022 and switched to "supervision" mode. The latest data shows that Tesla's FSD car is equivalent to 8 times the safety factor of the average driver in the United States. With the continuous update of the FSD version, its performance is also continuously improving.
However, the implementation of Robotaxi faces many challenges. Under the laws, regulations and regulatory systems of various countries around the world, large-scale application is still difficult. In addition, autonomous driving technology needs to address many long-tail problems caused by edge scenarios, which limit the progress to commercialization.
Competition and outlook
Tesla isn't the only company to venture into the robotaxi space. Google's parent company Alphabet's Waymo has operated commercial driverless ride-hailing services in many places in the United States, and a number of companies in China have also set foot in this field, in China, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other cities have launched corresponding policies to support driverless cars on the road, in Nansha District, Guangzhou City, Pingshan District, Shenzhen and other places, Pony.ai, Didi, AutoX, etc. have started unmanned commercial operations.
While Robotaxi has a promising future, there are still many technical and legal challenges to overcome, and China has long been a player in the robotaxi track. A little worse, it may be blasted by these local autonomous driving manufacturers in China.
Tesla's challenges and opportunities
On April 2, Tesla announced that its sales in the first quarter of 2024 will be 386,800 units, down 8.53% year-on-year and more than 20% quarter-on-quarter, which is its worst result in the same period since the first quarter of 2020. The worse news is that Tesla's production in the first quarter was 433,000 units, 47,000 more than delivered.
Production and marketing have been upside down, and the risk here can be imagined.
Tesla also gave some reasons for the decline in the first quarter of 2024, such as the production line upgrade of the new Model 3 at the Fremont factory in California, the arson case at the factory in Berlin, Germany, which led to a reduction in production, and the impact of the Red Sea situation on shipping led to a decline in sales in the European market.
When Tesla is currently facing the above low price sales and cannot pull up sales, the Robotaxi plan has become its most important development direction. Musk hopes to reduce transportation costs and bring new business models through Robotaxi and FSD fully autonomous driving technology. If Robotaxi can be commercialized on a large scale, it will greatly promote Tesla's revenue growth and profit margin improvement.
epilogue
Despite the challenges, Tesla's advancements in FSD technology and the growth of market demand have made the Robotaxi program still have great potential for development.
In the future, Tesla will continue to strive to promote the development of autonomous driving technology and bring new changes to human transportation.