Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the electric vehicle maker expects to launch its long-awaited driverless robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, on June 22.
The exact date could change because Tesla is being “super paranoid about safety,” Musk wrote in a post on X Tuesday night.
He shared a video from another user on X showing a Tesla robotaxi slowly turning around a corner and pausing for pedestrians crossing the street as it took a test drive through the Texas capital.
The EV maker eventually hopes to offer the robotaxi feature to all Tesla owners, enabling then to turn their own cars into a temporary taxi service.
“There’ll be some cars that Tesla owns itself,” Musk said last summer at Tesla’s annual conference. “But then for the fleet that’s owned by our customers, it will be like an Airbnb thing.”
“So you can say like, I’m going away for a week. Just one tap on your Tesla app, your car gets added to the fleet and it just makes money for you while you’re gone.”
All of the vehicles currently coming out of Tesla factories are capable of unsupervised self-driving, Musk said Tuesday night.
The success of the robotaxi is crucial for Tesla, which plans for most of its future business to come from its robotics and artificial intelligence divisions.
Musk has claimed the company’s robots and self-driving cars could boost Tesla’s market value to at least $30 trillion.
“We believe the vast majority of valuation upside looking ahead for Tesla is centered around the success of its autonomous vision taking hold with this key launch in Austin ahead,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said in a note Wednesday.
The Tesla bull estimated progress in the company’s AI and self-driving technologies is worth at least $1 trillion, and that the electric vehicle maker could reach a $2 trillion market cap by the end of 2026.
Tesla, the most valuable automobile company in the world, has a market cap of $1.5 trillion. Its stock was up nearly 2% Wednesday.
Sales have suffered in key global markets, losing out to cheaper Chinese rival BYD amid backlash over Musk’s ties to President Trump.
It also faces competition in the US from Alphabet’s Waymo, which operates driverless taxis in several major cities across the country, including San Francisco and Austin.
Waymo was recently forced to suspend service in downtown Los Angeles after five of its vehicles were set ablaze during anti-ICE protests.
China also boasts a significant robotaxi fleet of approximately 1,700 as companies like Baidu’s Apollo Go, WeRide and Pony AI all launched fully autonomous services.
Tesla was anticipated to enjoy fast-tracked regulatory approvals under the Trump administration – but Musk’s relationship with the president has fractured after a heated public feud on social media.
Musk argued that Trump would not have won the election without his help and claimed the president was in the “Epstein files,” while Trump retorted that Musk was simply enacting revenge for the end of the EV tax credit included in the GOP spending bill.
The mogul attempted to ease tensions on Wednesday, writing on X: “I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far.”
Credit: Source link
