Just hours after Elon Musk claimed Reuters was “lying” about its plans to ditch the low-cost $25,000 EV and instead focus all its efforts on a robotaxi, the Tesla CEO announced on X that he would unveil the robotaxi mentioned in An event taking place on August 8th.
The announcement comes as Tesla EV sales have lagged and profits have fallen, leaving the company and its CEO searching for another product to boost sales — or at least the stock price.
Earlier on Friday, a Reuters report citing three anonymous sources and internal documents said that Tesla was abandoning its plan to build a low-cost electric car and would instead focus resources on a planned robotaxi that would be built on the same small EV platform that was… It is also supposed to be built. Low cost car operation.
Musk took to his social media network, X, and claimed without evidence that Reuters was “lying.” He did not dispute any specific details.
Hours later, Musk posted on X that the “Tesla Robotaxi” would be unveiled on August 8.
Reports have circulated for years that Tesla was working on these two vehicles. But Musk has hesitated about prioritizing a concept car or a car without a steering wheel or pedals, even though a fully self-driving car has not yet been produced, according to descriptions in Walter Isaacson's biography of Musk.
The CEO backed away in mid-2022 from his engineers' insistence on referring to a car with a steering wheel and pedals. Even as it moved forward, lead designer Franz von Holzhausen and engineering vice president Lars Moravy kept the more traditional version of the car alive as a “shadow project,” Isaacson wrote at the time.
Musk has been promising self-driving capabilities in Tesla cars for years. In 2016, he said Tesla would drive itself across the country by the end of 2017 (it didn't happen). In 2019, he promised to launch the company's first robotaxi as part of a broader vision for an autonomous ride-sharing network in 2020 (that also didn't happen). A few years later, he said a dedicated robotaxi without a steering wheel or pedals would be on the market by 2024.
Tesla vehicles come standard with the Autopilot-branded driver assistance system. For an additional $12,000, owners can purchase “full self-driving,” or FSD — a feature that CEO Elon Musk has promised for years will one day provide full self-driving capabilities. Tesla cars are not self-driving. Instead, FSD includes a number of automated driving features that still require the driver to be ready to take control at all times, including the Summon parking feature, as well as Navigate on Autopilot, an active steering system that navigates the car from the highway. – On-ramp to off-ramp, including intersections and lane changes. The system is also supposed to handle routing on city streets.
