- “Tesla will launch a self-driving taxi service in 2020”, said Elon Musk.
- It can prove to be fatal for current taxi services like Uber and Lyft.
- Tesla car owners would be able to make money by adding their cars to the fleet of taxis.
Image courtesy: Tesla.com
Tesla has been at the forefront of attempting to produce self-driven cars for a long time. Elon Musk and his team have been at it from more than a decade and have come up with several prototypes over the years. Now they finally have one model that they believe is the one they want to go ahead with.
Tesla’s electric cars have been in massive demand in recent years but the brand has not been able to meet their customer’s demands off late. Instead, Tesla now has come up with the idea of bringing in a million self-driven robotaxis by next year. We all know Musk has made big claims in the past but this deadline is a bit too much even for his standards. It would be interesting to see how they cope with the demand for mass-producing cars that have never been built. When asked about the logistics, Musk did mention about a possible fundraiser in the offing. Initially, he had thought of being cash-flow positive by next year but this ambitious project has made him change his words now. He said that by the end of this project, he would like Tesla to be cash-flow neutral and that in itself would be a win-win situation for the company and the customers. He hopes to be extremely cash flow positive in the following years of this project being in full flow across the world.
Image courtesy: Tesla.com
Elon Musk said that Tesla is thriving to produce cars that would leave people no option but to buy the Tesla car and nothing else. His vision is to create affordable environment-friendly cars so that no smart person would opt for any other car than a Tesla. Musk is known to make such bold statements but now that they are actually coming up with automated vehicles, it would be interesting to see how they fare in the real world scenarios. Even Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, the leading company in autonomy, has shied away from leaving their autonomous vehicles driverless. They had taken the safer route after their initial round of tests.
The idea is that the customers can put their cars on a shared network of robotaxis with each car running on its own without a human driving it. It is a network that would need perfection to its core to make the whole project a success. In the event that Tesla hosted, close to 100 analysts and investors were present who each took a ride in the Model 3 car from Tesla. Even though the path the car took was a curated route, the riders were happy with the way the car performed. It showed true potential and a promising future lying ahead.
Are you also eagerly waiting for the Tesla Taxis?
