Dive Brief:
- Tesla will launch its first robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in June, CEO Elon Musk told investors on the company’s April 22 earnings call.
- Tesla vehicles are being tested on the streets of Austin now, Musk said, “to make sure that we deliver a safe product.”
- However, Tesla won’t have the field to itself. Waymo already operates driverless ride-hailing vehicles in Austin and other cities where Musk may want to serve, as he laid out an ambitious growth target on the Tuesday call.
Dive Insight:
The nascent robotaxi industry suffered a setback last year when General Motors shut down its Cruise subsidiary after investing some $10 billion in the business. But Waymo has expanded since 2017 from its original base in Phoenix to Austin, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and plans to soon add Atlanta and Miami to its service areas.
Amazon-owned Zoox began testing autonomous vehicles in Los Angeles earlier this month. The company has also been testing a special-purpose robotaxi — a bidirectional vehicle without a steering wheel — in San Francisco and Las Vegas, where it plans to begin service this year.
Musk said the vehicles that will begin its robotaxi operation in Austin will probably be Tesla Model Y cars. He differentiated Tesla’s approach from that of Waymo: “The [Waymo] car is very expensive, made in low volume,” he said. “Teslas probably cost 25% or 20% of what a Waymo costs and [are] made in very high volume.”
Instead of the various sensors that Waymo uses to watch the road, such as cameras, lidar and radar, Musk said Tesla relies on artificial intelligence. “Tesla has both an incredible AI software team and AI hardware chip design team,” he said. Musk said following the rollout in Austin, its robotaxis will “be in many other cities in the U.S. by the end of this year.” He added, “I predict that there will be millions of Tesla's operating autonomously, fully autonomously in the second half of next year.”
Tesla is also working on a purpose-built robotaxi. In October, Tesla unveiled a two-seat, driverless vehicle dubbed the Cybercab. Work is underway on that project, according to Tesla Vice President of Vehicle Engineering, Lars Moravy, speaking on the earnings call. “You'll see them on the test roads in a couple of months,” he said.
