Tesla reveals major ‘Robotaxi' move
Tesla's successful debut of self-driving 'Robotaxi' electric cars has paid overnight dividends for company chief executive Elon Musk.
An 8 per cent jump in the brand's share price, which rose to US$354.68, increased the value of Musk's shares in the company by about US$15bn ($23 billion).
Musk has staked Tesla's short-term future in autonomous vehicles, betting on Robotaxis as opposed to a cheaper, more compact model than the brand's existing Model 3 and Model Y electric cars.
While many Tesla fans were initially underwhelmed by the Robotaxi's unveiling in October 2024, successful rides for folks invited to try out the service in Austin, Texas, have boosted its appeal.
Tesla fans took to X to praise the brand's new service, with many posting videos of driverless cars whisking them around town.
One user, Farzad, said he was 'completely mind blown that the same car I can buy today starting at around $38k – which also happens to be the best selling car in the world – just did paid driverless rides around Austin, TX without someone behind the steering wheel and pedal'.
'The implications from this are far-reaching and very disruptive. This breaks transportation,' he said.
Another user, Zack, pointed out the tech's potential to make city commuting much more convenient, and said 'yesterday it took me almost 30 minutes to find a spot and today, I got dropped off right in front'.
'Didn't have to pay for parking either. Game changing.'
Musk told US TV network CNBC that his Robotaxis are a better bet than rival services such as Google's Waymo, which require an expensive combination of cameras, radars and lasers – or lidar – to find their way around town.
Others such as General Motors' Super Cruise rely on high-resolution lidar maps of highways which are scanned by specialised mapping vehicles, then stored in the cloud and accessed by customers who pay subscription fees.
While Waymo was the first service to offer commercially available driverless taxi services, Musk says Tesla's take 'will be better' in the long run.
'The way that roads have been designed … it's basically for intelligence – biological neural net – and eyes,' Musk told CNBC.
'That's how the whole road system is designed. It's not designed for shooting lasers out of your eyes …
'So what will actually work best for the road system is artificial intelligence – digital neural nets – and cameras.
'When you have multiple sensors they tend to get confused, and if you get confused, that's what can lead to accidents.
'We used to have a radar and a camera in the car but we would find they would disagree and you don't know which one to believe.'
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