Tesla boss Elon Musk has revealed a number of new autonomous products, including the Robotaxi.
At his ‘We, Robot’ event held at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, Musk, who also owns social network X/Twitter, showed off a silver-chrome hued Robotaxi, which has no steering wheel or pedals. Instead, it uses AI to navigate roads and charges via induction.
As reported by CNET, Musk said Robotaxi, which he also called Cybercab at various points, will cost below $30,000 and roll out before 2027. "I think it's going to be a glorious future," he declared.
Robotaxi pic.twitter.com/zVJ9v9yXNr
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 11, 2024
Next up, Musk revealed the Robovan, a larger autonomous vehicle for up to 20 people. It can also be used to transport goods, Musk added. "With autonomy, you get your time back,” Musk said, pointing to the possibility for people to do other things like work, use a phone, or watch a movie while taking a ride in one of Tesla’s autonomous cars. There's no price or release window for Robovan.
Musk insisted that autonomous cars will be safer than those people drive. "It'll save lives, like a lot of lives, and prevent injuries," he said. "I think we'll see autonomous cars become 10 times safer than a human."
Robovan details pic.twitter.com/Pdito0dfRq
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 11, 2024
Before Robotaxi and Robovan come out, Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y vehicles will move from supervised self-driving to unsupervised-self driving, starting with California and Texas in 2025, and then elsewhere in the U.S. and the rest of the world depending on regulatory approval, Musk said.
And finally, Musk showed off the latest version of Tesla Bot, which he insisted can do things like babysit, go shopping, and serve you drinks. It’ll cost between $20,000 and $30,000.
Musk said Tesla had "made a lot of progress" with Tesla Bot, dubbed Optimus. During the event the humanoid robots mingled with attendees serving drinks. Some even gathered to dance to Daft Punk’s Robot Rock.
There’s a long road ahead of Tesla before Robotaxi and Robovan hit the market, and Tesla itself doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to this sort of thing. As The Guardian pointed out, in February 2023, Tesla was pressured to recall full self-driving vehicles by U.S. safety regulators due to the system allowing speeding and other traffic violations. Tesla fixed the issue with a software update.
Then, in April this year, regulators announced an investigation into full self-driving and autopilot systems and whether Tesla was doing enough to make sure the human drivers were paying attention, after a reported 20 crashes involving autopilot following the earlier recall.
In December 2023, more than two million Tesla vehicles were recalled over a safety issue related to the Autopilot software.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.