Just this week Tesla, after an awful-lot of leaks, revealed its Cybercab, or we’d like to call, the Tesla Robotaxi. The choice of the Warner Bros Studios was probably appropriate for the much-anticipated launch. Where better to unveil the dream than in a dream factory?
The vision is of a vehicle so cheap that it will be the first choice for the masses when it comes to personalised transportation. But will Elon Musk be able to deliver the blockbuster he is promising or will the Tesla Robotaxi just be another Hollywood fantasy.
One thing for sure is that the Tesla Robotaxi will face stiff competition along the way.
According to Elon Musk the Cybercab will be on sale before 2027 and come in a two-seater format devoid of pedals or a steering wheel. I am not sure that I should believe his timeline seeing as he once promised a fleet of Robotaxis by 2020.
Tesla are not the only nor the first to have a Robotaxi product. The current market leader in the US of A is Waymo, which falls under Googles Alphabet umbrella, who currently have 700 self-driving taxis in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix and are preparing a launch in two other US cities soon.
Further back is Cruise, who are backed but not owned by General Motors. Zoox is Amazons venture into the field and are currently under test in Miami and Las Vegas.
Then we have the Chinese entrants. Baidu are operating in ten cities already and are planning to have 1000 taxis in Wuhan by the end of the year. Others such as Pony.ai, We Ride and Didi are also in a number of cities.
Thus far, most of the US pilot programs are in cities where the weather is mild and the streets are wide and straight. Scaling up to older cities with restricted road width and in clement weather has been a problem.
To deploy in a new city entails massive investment by the operator. Then there is the cost of the vehicles themselves which is about USD150,000. It is not just as simple as buying a car. There is a whole bunch of hardware that needs to be added to the car from Lidar and cameras and sensors and added computers to make sense of it all.
The presence of a human in the car accounts for about 50% of the fare in a ride-hailing service which should mean that there is an opportunity for driverless taxis. But the services need significant amounts of space around city centres for the data-centres and car servicing and recharging sites.
Tesla are betting that they can reduce the cost of the vehicles to about USD30,000 and by using some of the tech that they already have in the group like his neural network which has been trained by the 6 million Teslas already on the road they will be easier to transfer from one city to another.
Even if Musk can make the technology work he will still need to get the regulators on board and they will have to believe that a system that only relies on cameras linked to a cloud based service will be safe enough to deal with unusual road conditions. Musk believes that he will gain regulatory approval but I am not so sure, just one incident during the testing phase will put him out of business for a very long time.
What about all of the current Ride-Hailing drivers that will lose their jobs? Well Musk expounded on his theory that current drivers could end up owning a fleet of Robotaxis and end up being “like a shepherd tending his flock.” Yeah right I think that is purely wishful thinking.
