RoboTaxi released on August 8 Expert: Impossible! Will Musk be able to do it this time

Musk's announcement that he will launch the long-promised driverless taxi (Robotaxi) on August 8 instantly detonated Wall Street, driving Tesla's stock price up nearly 4%, boosting investor confidence to a certain extent.

However, many analysts believe that the release of RoboTaxi on August 8 is a big pie drawn by Musk for the stock price. At the 2019 Self-Driving Day event, Musk publicly said that Tesla would build its own fully self-driving Robotaxi fleet, and five years later, Musk's vision has not yet been realized.

On April 13, Philip Koopman, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, bluntly said that it is still many years before fully autonomous driving technology is realized, "At the moment, even the industry-leading Waymo and Cruise still have problems with their self-driving cars, and they are still a long way from being completely driverless." ”

According to Koopman, implementing Robotaxi means that people in the car can be kept safe without intervening. "In order to do this, whatever software is installed in the car has to be near-perfect. It's clear that FSD (Full Self-Driving) hasn't reached that level yet, and strong claims require strong evidence, and where is the evidence now? ”

Vicki Bryan, founder and CEO of bond analytics firm Bond Angle LLC, believes that at least the Model 2 is viable, while RoboTaxi is not. "I don't think Tesla has the technology to convert existing Tesla cars into self-driving cars, and while Musk has been promising to do that for years, it's unlikely to happen right now. "

Media analysts believe that in the case of Tesla facing many business challenges, Musk's move to rely on Robotaxi to boost its stock price may disappoint investors again. At a critical moment when he was supposed to increase demand for his products and drive business growth by lowering prices and innovating new ways, Musk chose to pursue self-driving car projects that are unlikely to pay off in the short term.

Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, believes that Tesla should move forward with both Robotaxi and Model 2. If Tesla sees Robotaxi as a replacement for the Model 2, it will be a serious strategic mistake.

He believes that although Robotaxi has great prospects, at this stage, the Model 2 is more urgent to meet the needs of the global large-scale market as a more affordable car option.

Tesla's FSD dilemma

After the first quarter results were called a "disaster", and then the new affordable Model 2 model was revealed to be delayed or completely canceled, Musk quickly responded and threw out a big move: Robotaxis will be launched on August 8.

However, there are still many uncertainties about whether Robotaxi can become Tesla's "life-saving straw". The essence of the Robotaxi business is to earn intermediary fees, and if it really achieves mass production, the economy will be better than that of Uber ride-hailing, which is one of the reasons why Tesla entered the game.

However, analysts believe that although the economic outlook is promising, it will take time to verify whether autonomous driving can actually be realized given the complexity of the technology. Media analysts pointed out that a key criterion for judging whether Tesla's FSD technology is truly ready is whether Tesla is willing to take responsibility for accidents that occur in its car's self-driving mode.

Bryant Walker Smith, an expert on self-driving law at the University of South Carolina School of Law, said that Tesla has not really achieved self-driving unless it makes it clear that drivers do not need to pay attention to road conditions, can drive responsibly, and are not responsible for accidents that occur when the car is driving itself.

Judging from the above criteria, Musk's attitude towards autonomous driving is somewhat contradictory, on the one hand, promising to launch a robo-taxi and actively promote the assisted driving system to buyers, and on the other hand, defending the lawsuit filed for the system not working as it should.

Musk had predicted that Tesla would have 1 million robo-taxis by 2020, but so far, Tesla has not launched a car that does not require driver monitoring.

Tesla's lawsuit has exposed the limitations of its driver assistance systems. Recently, Tesla reached a settlement with the families of the victims of a fatal crash involving the driver assistance system Autopilot in Silicon Valley. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration believes that the system may give drivers a false sense of security.

Professor Philip Koopman said that every player who has entered the self-driving car game has found that projects that were thought to be achievable in just one or two years will eventually take 10 to 20 years to realize, "and Tesla has also found that. ”

John Krafcik, the former CEO of Waymo, Google's self-driving technology company, said that Tesla promised eight years ago that all of their cars would achieve full self-driving, and Tesla has changed its rhetoric several times during this time, and most people believe that Tesla will have years to reach full self-driving and may not be able to achieve it this year.

Tesla's self-driving relies on cameras and radar, rather than lidar, which Koopman believes is like "tying a person's hand behind his back."

Facing regulatory and legal constraints, Robotaxi may be restricted on the road

At present, the main bottleneck of Robotaxi business is to obtain the license of various state regulators, and the legal regulatory level limits the speed of its promotion.

In 2023, Robotaxi has repeatedly "confronted" the traffic police in the United States, and Robosaxi, including Waymo and Cruise, were asked by the traffic police to pull over when driving on open roads. However, although the Robotaxi braked because it recognized someone in front of it, it did not seem to understand the gesture of the traffic police, but stopped in the middle of the road and stalemate with the traffic police for more than a minute, causing a traffic jam.

The media quoted industry insiders as pointing out that more targeted algorithm training is needed to solve the problem, and the industry expects it to take 10 years, and the resulting security risks are also an important reason for restricting the liberalization of supervision:

The long-tail problem of autonomous driving caused by a large number of edge scenarios, that is, about 10% of the scenarios fail. In addition, autonomous driving technology, especially at the level of perception and decision-making, is still imperfect, and Robotaxi "does not obey" frequently.

Professor Bryant Walker Smith said that due to the gap between Musk and Tesla's commitment to self-driving and actual progress, coupled with some questionable remarks made by Musk, Tesla's driver assistance system may face more scrutiny and questioning.

California is at the forefront of the development of robotaxis in the United States, and although Musk announced last week that it would release a robotaxi product in August, Tesla has yet to apply for the two permits required to launch a robotaxi service, according to the California Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the state's agencies responsible for regulating robo-taxis.

Tesla currently only holds a low-level road test permit for self-driving cars from the California DMV, which only allows testing in the presence of a human safety driver. Industry insiders say that because Tesla relies more on its existing driver assistance systems, it may take longer to obtain a license to operate a robotaxi, and may not even be approved.

Waymo, for example, as a spin-off of Google's self-driving car division, applied in December 2022 and received a license from the CPUC eight months later. It can be seen that obtaining a license is not an easy task.

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