We have several electric car threads, but this is bye week and the first time I have noticed no steering wheel or pedals. Just wow.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the highly anticipated robotaxi last night, a driverless, $30K vehicle called the Cybercab.
Tesla says the car—which lacks pedals and steering wheels—will go into production by 2027. The company also debuted a 20-person robovan and touted its Optimus robots.
The debut is almost a decade in the making and comes amid a series of lawsuits and investigations over Tesla's supervised driving vehicles. The company's investors hope robotaxis will generate almost 90% of Tesla's value and earnings by 2029. This would involve drivers being able to rent their vehicle through an app when not in use, earning passive income in a "part Uber, part Airbnb" model. Tesla hopes electric vehicle sales will eventually account for only 9% of Tesla's value.
Tesla is not the first company to pursue this model; Google’s Waymo already services 100,000 paid rides per week, including in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix. Amazon's Zoox is coming soon to San Francisco.
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Musk has been promising autonomous vehicles for about a decade now. Good luck on seeing the Robotaxis roll out by 2027.
I will say that the robots like Optimus will be pretty transformative, however, in the aging and disability field given the workforce shortages. Even at the higher end of the cost spectrum, those robots can do what direct support workers do at a lower cost.
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