Askume Oct 10 – Tesla (TSLA.O) Chief Executive Elon Musk said these efforts would boost the growth of electric vehicles.
Social media is abuzz with excitement about the event, including screenshots of invitations and speculation about what might be revealed at the event. But investors and analysts pointed to challenges facing the technology and tempered expectations.
Social media posts from attendees showed a festival-like atmosphere at the venue, with crowds, lights and a giant stage. “We have built a futuristic world,” Musk said on social media platform X in response to posts from attendees. The post also includes a booklet with information about the event.
Social media posts showed Stellantis Chairman John Elkann among the crowd along with Musk’s brother Kimbal.
Musk plans to operate a fleet of self-driving Tesla taxis called Cybercabs, which passengers can summon via an app. Individual Tesla owners can also make money on the app by listing their vehicles as robo-taxis.
The event, which will take place on Thursday at Warner Bros. Studios near Los Angeles, California, will have the theme “We, Robots” — an obvious reference to American author Isaac Asimov’s science fiction short story “I, Robot,” but it’s also Musk who echoes the sentiment that Tesla “should be considered an artificial intelligence robotics company rather than an automaker .”
This will include investors, stock analysts and Tesla fans. Their first questions will be how quickly Tesla can ramp up production of self-driving taxis, at what cost and, most importantly, how much money it can make from the taxi business.
The company will also focus on developing partial automation software, marketing it as fully autonomous, which observers expect will form the basis of its robotaxis.
Musk is also expected to show off cheaper versions of Tesla’s existing electric vehicles and updates to his humanoid robot Optimus Prime.
Unfulfilled promise
Musk said in 2019 that he was “very confident” the company would launch robotaxis next year. With his promises unfulfilled, Musk shifted his focus this year to vehicle development, scrapping plans to build smaller, cheaper cars that were widely seen as a way to deal with slowing demand for electric vehicles.
Tesla’s deliveries are expected to fall for the first time this year as purchasing incentives fail to attract enough customers for its older lineup of electric vehicles. Sharp price cuts to offset rising interest rates have also squeezed profit margins.
Analysts said that to convince investors that Tesla can sustain the rapid growth rates it has reported in some quarters, Musk needs to show a prototype and provide a detailed plan for how Tesla could help the Alphabet (GOOGL.O) company operate self-driving robotaxis for paying passengers in some U.S. cities.
Other companies trying to enter the robo-taxi market have lost billions of dollars due to complex technology and strict regulations, causing some companies to shut down.
Some companies are still pushing the initiative, including General Motors’ (GMN) Cruise, Amazon’s (AMZNO) Zoox, and Chinese companies like Veride.
Others use expensive hardware like lidar, but Musk relies solely on cameras and artificial intelligence to run FSD to keep costs low. But FSD, which requires constant attention from the driver, has faced regulatory and legal scrutiny, and there have been at least two fatal accidents involving the technology.
