Tesla Inc. fleshed out plans to launch a robotaxi business Elon Musk is counting on to help usher in next phase of growth, after the company posted quarterly earnings that missed estimates.
The electric-car maker expects to start offering a paid service in Austin this June using self-driving Teslas that won’t rely on humans supervising the steering wheel, Musk said Wednesday.
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Musk said Tesla will start offering “unsupervised Full Self-Driving,” or FSD, in the Texas capital where the company is headquartered. He’s confident the service will roll out in California and “many regions” of the US by the end of this year.
Tesla previously said in October that it aimed to launch both unsupervised FSD and autonomous ride-hailing in California and Texas this year. Musk told analysts Wednesday that the only constraint he sees for the technology next year is regulation.
Tesla has long sold a suite of features it’s called FSD that require constant driver supervision and don’t make its vehicles autonomous. Musk has a track record of blowing past his predicted product timelines, particularly with respect to self-driving technology.
Autonomous vehicles face a number of regulatory hurdles. Tesla’s Cybercab, a car lacking pedals or a steering wheel that the company expects to produce next year, would require an exemption from existing US safety standards to be allowed on US roads. Under existing rules, that permission would apply to a limit of just 2,500 vehicles per year.
States also have their own patchwork of rules for autonomous vehicles, including California, where Tesla has a permit to test them with a driver. The state could be a more challenging environment than Texas, which has fewer hurdles.
Musk has called for policy changes including a national approval process for autonomous vehicles. He’s given little detail on how Tesla aims to roll out a robotaxi service. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation doesn’t currently list the company as a ride-share licensee. Musk did say that Tesla wants the service to be “way safer” than human drivers.
See here for the background. As the Chron notes, in the first year or so the rides would come from existing Tesla models, since the Cybercab doesn’t exist yet. As Engadget notes, the software for FSD mode hasn’t been released yet. As Axios notes, Tesla still faces an NHTSA investigation of its Autopilot system and the FSD software due to recent past failures. Oh, and Tesla’s last few earnings reports haven’t been good, with this one showing some real concerns. But otherwise, everything’s going great!
One more thing, from that Engadget piece:
And then next year, Tesla owners will be able to add their cars to the fleet whenever they want, kind of like how people can list and unlist their properties on Airbnb, Musk said. He explained that the automaker wants to iron out any kinks first, such as making sure billing works well and that the robotaxis will stop at the right spot when they’re ordered.
I’ve mentioned before that the assumption of ridesharing services going all in on autonomous vehicles when they are more generally available would necessarily mean a significant change in their business model, since right now they don’t own or store or maintain and of their fleet. I suppose tapping into the existing network of people who already own suitable cars would address some of that, but 1) how many people will want to lease their cars out in this fashion, and 2) wouldn’t this in some ways undermine the case for buying the car in the first place? I don’t know how much one can make on the AirBnB plan, but surely it’s less expensive and less of a hassle to just be the customer than the car owner. I get the idea here, and I’m sure some people will take advantage of it. But it won’t be for everyone, and maybe the pool of potential automotive AirBnB owners is smaller than they think. I’m just saying.