Undeterred by limits, Elon Musk plots a big robotaxi expansion

The Verge

6 days ago

Tesla wants to bring its robotaxi service to new markets, including cities in Florida, Nevada, Arizona, and California, Elon Musk said in an earnings call Wednesday. The company is testing its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) feature in Europe and China, and hopes the launch the controversial product in the near future. And it is plotting a new version of its Optimus humanoid robot.
'We have done what we said we were going to do,' Musk said. 'That doesn't mean we're always on time, but we get it done. And our naysayers are sitting there with egg on their face.'
It was another sign that Musk wasn't going to let the limitations of his company's autonomous driving technology stand in the way of its rapid expansion. Tesla's robotaxis in Austin includes safety monitors in the passenger seat with access to a kill switch — a fallback that Waymo currently doesn't need for its commercial robotaxi service. The company lacks many of the permits to launch a robotaxi business in California. And its vehicles committed a raft of minor safety violations, including phantom braking and driving on the wrong side of the room, in the first weeks in operation.
'Our naysayers are sitting there with egg on their face.'
Musk repeated his position that Tesla was 'being extremely paranoid' about the rollout of its tech, but also couldn't help himself from making broad, grandiose promises about the future — which is typical of the billionaire CEO. He said that 50 percent of the US population would have access to Tesla's robotaxis by the end of the year. And he predicted that Tesla customers would be able to update their own vehicles to driver autonomously without supervision by the end of 2025.
Musk also cited 'regulatory approvals' as possible obstacles to the fruition of his robotaxi dreams. Some states require companies obtain permits before rolling out autonomous vehicles for ridehailing purposes. But there are no federal requirements, and most companies are limited only by their own risk of liability if an accident occurs.
Musk has admitted in the past that people who own older Tesla vehicles with HW3 will need the company's new HW4 or 5 computers in order to support its unsupervised version of Full Self-Driving. That hardware update is likely to be incredibly costly for the company. In today's earnings call, Musk provided a brief update, saying that he wants to get unsupervised FSD finished on HW4 vehicles before figuring out what to do with HW3 vehicles. He stopped short of recommending that customers simply buy new vehicles.
Musk's promise that regular Tesla owners would one day be able to update their cars to become fully autonomous vehicles has been at the core of the company's huge valuation increase over the years. But now it seems that millions of Tesla owners are likely to be completely left out of that future.
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