After a decade of unfulfilled promises about driverless cars; tesla CEO Elon Musk touted the company’s CyberCab concept Thursday night by unveiling a short, silver two-seater with no steering wheel or pedals.
Taking to the stage in his CyberCab nearly an hour after the company’s “We, Robot” event was scheduled to begin, Musk said the company has 21 of these vehicles, for a total of 50 “self-driving” vehicles. He said it was at the Warner venue. Bros. Studio in Burbank, California, is where Tesla held its invite-only event.
Musk did not provide details about where Tesla plans to produce the car, but said consumers will be able to buy a Tesla CyberCab for less than $30,000. He said the company hopes to produce the CyberCab by 2027.
He also said he expects Tesla to roll out “unsupervised FSD” in its Model 3 and Model Y electric cars in Texas and California next year.
FSD, which stands for Full Self-Driving, is Tesla’s premium driver assistance system and is currently available in a “supervised” version for Tesla electric vehicles. FSD currently requires a human driver at the wheel and the ability to steer or brake at any time. Earlier this year, Tesla added “supervised” to its product names.
“It’s going to be a bright future,” Musk said Thursday night.
Musk also announced plans to build an autonomous electric robovan that could carry up to 20 people and transport goods. “Densification is the solution,” for example in transporting sports teams, he said.
He said CyberCab and Robovan will use inductive charging, meaning these self-driving cars will be able to travel to a charging station without plugging in.
Tesla will unveil RoboVan at the We, Robot event on October 10, 2024.
Mr. Musk has spent years touting Tesla’s work on self-driving cars and promising that self-driving cars will be brought to market. Along the way, he has repeatedly elaborated fanciful visions for shareholders and set and broken deadlines for himself.
In 2015, Musk told shareholders that Tesla cars would be “fully autonomous” within three years. they didn’t. Musk said in 2016 that Tesla cars would be able to drive cross-country without any human intervention by the end of 2017, but that never happened. And in 2019, on a conference call with institutional investors that helped raise more than $2 billion, Musk said Tesla expects to have 1 million robotaxi-enabled vehicles on the road in 2020, each completing 100 hours of driving time per week. He said it could be done. money for the owner.
In April, Musk was still telling investors that autonomy was the company’s future.
“If someone doesn’t believe Tesla is the solution to autonomy, I don’t think they should invest in the company,” he said on a conference call with analysts. “That’s what I’m going to do, and I’m doing that.”
At Thursday night’s event, which had previously been described as a “product launch,” Musk welcomed attendees to a “party” and said they would be able to test drive self-driving cars in a closed environment on the grounds of a movie studio. Ta. .
Toward the end of the roughly 23-minute stage, the CEO said Tesla wanted to show that Optimus, the humanoid robot it is currently developing, is not just for “canned videos.”
“The Optimus robot will be walking among you,” Musk said, asking attendees to “be kind” to the robots serving drinks at the venue’s bar. The presentation ended with Musk saying, “Let’s party” and a livestream of a group of Optimus robots dancing to club hits.
The event marked Tesla’s first product announcement since 2019, when it unveiled its Cybertruck design. The angular steel pickups began shipping to customers in late 2023 and have been the subject of five voluntary recalls in the U.S. since then.
Video: Elon Musk unveils Tesla Robovan
