Even on the eve of the quarterly reporting event, the head of Tesla confirmed that he had decided to postpone the presentation of the unmanned Cybercab taxi from August 8 to October, but he announced the new date for the announcement only yesterday. Now the presentation of the Tesla robotic taxi is scheduled for October 10, as he clarified the night before.
Image Source: Tesla
Musk has already spoken in passing about the reasons for the postponement of this event, mentioning the need to make “important changes to the design of the front end” of the car at his request, and also adding the possibility of using this delay to prepare for the demonstration of “a few more things.” Let us remind you that the unmanned Tesla taxi should initially be deprived of the usual controls that could be quickly operated by a person. Most likely, the entire platform of such a vehicle will be optimized for maximum profit in the field of passenger commercial transportation.
At the same time, as Electrek notes, Elon Musk, at a quarterly reporting event this week, expectedly questioned the feasibility of his own plans to introduce an autopilot that does not require driver supervision by the end of this year. Let us recall that having started equipping all Tesla electric vehicles with autopilot equipment in 2016, Musk expected to teach them to do without a driver by improving the software by the end of 2019, but subsequently each time postponed this milestone by a year. Accordingly, Musk’s current forecast implied that these plans would be implemented before the end of 2024.
And yet, at the quarterly earnings conference, the head of Tesla expressed himself very vaguely: “I will be surprised if Tesla does not have a self-driving autopilot ready next year.” This formulation gives reason to believe that this year the set goal may not be achieved, and in this case the deadline will be postponed to next year. However, Musk explained that he still expects to successfully create a “full autopilot” this year. Now Tesla is trying to convince regulators in North America that its automation is safer than human drivers. The company will also try to bring driver-controlled FSD to the European and Asian markets by the end of this year.