It's a pity, it's a pity.
This is my deepest feeling about this event after watching Tesla's press conference live today and chatting with the brothers in the live broadcast room for more than two hours.
It's not because of what awesome things were announced at the press conference, or because the cheap Model 2 or the new Model Y has been officially announced. It's not what Brother Neck originally thought, he can let the Tesla he bought go out for you to run Didi.
It's because Musk really didn't say too many things clearly at the press conference.
I tried to summarize the content of this conference, that is, Musk spent more than 20 minutes today to introduce three new products, and introduced a business model that I think is quite good in a more obscure way, but there is no dry goods at all.
All I could actually feel was the rich aroma of flatbread.
For an event that Musk has warmed up for more than half a year and should have been Tesla's best demonstration of its technical strength in recent years, this is no longer satisfactory, and it is not satisfactory at all.
Considering that there must be a lot of brothers who don't have time to fish and watch the live broadcast this morning, Brother Neck will quickly give everyone this slightly hasty press conference first.
At the beginning of the event, Musk appeared in a very handsome-looking car. And this car is the most important protagonist of today's event, and it is also the Tesla driverless taxi that the outside world has been speculating about: Cybercab (literal translation of Cybercab).
As far as the car itself is concerned, although Musk himself did not say it, according to my observations, the Cybercab should be a completely new model developed independently of Tesla's existing models.
The wheelbase and front and rear overhangs are extremely short, but the roof is relatively high, most likely to take care of headroom. The new front and rear light clusters are obviously not simply shared with the accessories of other models.
The doors open a bit like the butterfly doors on a supercar, with only one row of seats for two people in the passenger compartment.
The interior is still the same rough style as ever, and a huge screen (visually larger than all Tesla models) is all the parts that can be interacted with.
Of course, the important point is that the Cybercab has no steering wheel, no pedals for acceleration and deceleration, and no rearview mirrors outside the car, which means that as an unmanned taxi, people can only sit on it like they are taking the subway, and cannot interfere with any operation of the car.
There is no rear window glass in the back of the car, and the entire hatchback structure is a huge trunk after opening, although it still looks a little simple, but the loading capacity is certainly not weak.
As for the cost that Lao Ma is most concerned about, he said that the cost of the Cybercab bike will be less than 30,000 dollars. Some overseas companies have disassembled the Model 3 before, and it is estimated that the cost is about 28,000 dollars, which means that the cost of the taxi should be comparable to the Model 3, not so cheap.
What it can do is basically the same as our domestic radish run, get in the car, confirm the destination, and then send you over, nothing unusual.
What's more interesting is that in order to make their unmanned taxis run more efficiently, Musk also designed a maintenance system that does not require people. You can do automatic vacuuming and screen cleaning for the car, and even there is no charging port in the car, as long as it is charged wirelessly like a mobile phone.
At the event, Lao Ma prepared dozens of Cybercabs for the actual experience of the media present, which feels that it should not be far from the actual landing, right? However, according to Lao Ma, Tesla's current plan is to complete the large-scale launch of the Cybercab by 2027.
And according to Lao Ma's consistent style, this kind of big cake in two years will probably have to be postponed at that time.
It's hard to say when it will be done.
After Cybercab finished speaking, another car drove into the venue, which was Lao Ma's second new car today, Robovan (literal translation of robot truck).
Let's just say that this shape is a little too sci-fi, isn't it? There are no windows in the front and back, and you can't see where the wheels are. If the old horse hadn't told me in advance that it was a car, I would have thought it was a mobile bus station.
Robovan is a large Cybercab because of the huge space, so you can modify it into different models according to what you want to do with it, change it to a truck if you want to pull goods, change it to an unmanned bus if you want to transport people, as well as ambulances, school buses, etc., with a high degree of freedom.
Then there's the already familiar Tesla robot Optimus Prime, which now has a new name called Tesla bot.
Unlike what we speculated before, the humanoid robot will go to the factory to screw the screws, at the press conference, Musk said that the main scene of Tesla Bot in the future is to go to everyone's home and become a family member, helping you do hygiene, take things, bubble coffee or something.
Musk's goal is to make the price of the Tesla Bot $20,000-$30,000 in the future, which is about the price of an entry-level car. And he thinks that all families around the world will want to have such a robot buddy at home.
So I guess that Lao Ma's goal for Optimus Prime is definitely not to sell a high-priced play concept, but to let humanoid robots go to as many homes as possible.
Well, it's a bit like the beginning of "Enemy of the Mechanics", right?
At this point, this morning's press conference came to an abrupt end. After Lao Ma said, "Let's get high, shall we", the robots in the venue began to jump and bartend, anyway, they entered the After Party.
Musk had less than 20 minutes from taking the stage to the end of the press conference. Before the start of the event, we were looking forward to the product details, technical route and service system planning, all of which were not or were lightly brushed aside.
I also probably scanned the comments on the Internet about this event after the event, and the most complained were:
These things that Lao Ma said can go down in history don't seem to be new things at all?
Indeed, when it comes to unmanned taxis alone, there are already two mature giants in United States, Cruise and Waymo, which are actually operating. Brother Neck's colleague has been on a business trip to the beautiful country for the past few days, and he will play with a Waymo unmanned car every day.
Even in our country, the Wuhan Radish Run, which was very popular a while ago, is no longer a new thing. At the same time, the functions of Tesla's unmanned taxis introduced by Lao Ma at the press conference today, such as point-to-point autonomous driving, can also be fully realized by the operators that have landed, and there are almost no surprises.
Correspondingly, in addition to the capabilities of the model, people may be more concerned about how Tesla will deal with the safety and policy problems that Tesla needs to face in unmanned taxis.
For example, after removing the steering wheel and pedals, if you encounter a dangerous situation that needs to be taken over, what is Tesla's solution?
We all know that the solution of Carrot Express is to remotely equip operators to take over in time, so will an AI-led company like Tesla use a larger monitoring model in the cloud to do safety redundancy for the small model on the car side?
Didn't say.
For example, if everyone buys Tesla's unmanned taxis, and the number of ownership becomes large, what is Tesla's scheduling strategy for them? How do you balance the difference in capacity in different places? What is the form and density of those unmanned operation and maintenance sites?
Didn't say.
But obviously, that's the point! Only when Tesla's planning in these technical details is clearly explained can everyone know what differences and advantages Tesla has from others in the field of unmanned travel, which is no longer new.
This is especially true on the humanoid robot, although Optimus Prime's body movements are basically as smooth as a real person, but the track is now very crowded. There was a hardcore player in the past, Boston Dynamics, and the latest Atlas platform has been able to reverse joint activities, and I have committed the Happy Valley effect.
Later, there was Figure 01, which was very popular a while ago, and it was linked to Chat GPT, and it was able to communicate with people almost normally, regardless of visual or language skills.
In contrast, what is new about Tesla Optimus Prime?
Although there are also voices saying that Tesla is willing to talk about technology before, for example, AI Day talked about a lot of technical routes related to autonomous driving, what BEV, Transformer, and occupy the grid.
As a result, it was said too clearly, and it was all learned by others, and now it is learned, and it is hidden and not said.
Although there is a slight hint of truth, but who knows if you have something not to say, or if you don't have something to put on that cake?
Because of this, after this press conference, Tesla's stock price changed from a 5% rise to a 4% decline, and nearly 10% of its market value evaporated inside and out. According to Tesla's current market value of more than 600 billion US dollars, as soon as this press conference starts, 60 billion dollars will be enough.
What does this mean, it shows that not only me, but also major capitals have little confidence in Tesla's future route.
Many friends who watched the press conference were saying, I thought that Lao Ma would be ruthless, but it turned out to be a big one.
But as I wrote at the beginning, in fact, Musk expressed Tesla's profit model in the process of unmanned taxis, and this model is very reasonable in my opinion, that is, a franchise model similar to that of bubble tea shops.
Musk said at the press conference that this unmanned taxi product is not operated by the brand itself like Waymo and Radish Run, and the scale is only a few hundred units.
It is a super-large fleet that can be purchased by ordinary consumers, and the scale can be calculated in tens of thousands.
This is equivalent to you can spend at least $30,000 to become a shareholder of Tesla's driverless fleet, and let your car run around for 24 hours to make money. As long as you give it enough time, it's an ATM that you won't run out of.
For Tesla, it can make money by selling cars, it can take a cut when people pay for a taxi, and when the user's car needs to use Tesla's unmanned operation and maintenance outlets, it can still charge a service fee like NIO's battery swap station model.
While the team owners continue to make profits, Tesla also has a steady stream of revenue.
And the basis of all this, FSD, because of Tesla's huge ownership and training computing power, will most likely have a more reliable experience than competing products such as Waymo. As long as the price is right, people will definitely be willing to pay for its mobility services.
To put it bluntly, the unmanned taxi that Musk wants to do has never been the kind of traditional model that requires a lot of material costs, only relies on fares to make money, and has a low profit margin. Instead, the cost of the fleet is shifted out, and the user is the boss, and the asset-light model is only the service provider.
It's a really clever idea, and that's what I think is the most regrettable thing about this morning's conference. Why don't you expand on it, why it won't be rolled out until 2027, and how did Tesla solve the previous technical details?
Old horse, old horse, you really have too many details that you haven't made clear.
We won't forgive you unless you immediately add the Cybercab to the rearview mirrors, the foot pedals of the steering wheel, and change it to a 150,000 Model 2.