Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the company will roll out a fleet of autonomous vehicles that will operate as taxis with no driver behind the wheel in Austin, Texas, in June. Hmmm, where have we heard that before?
Oh, right – from Musk himself back in 2019. At the automaker's Autonomy Day nearly six years ago, he said robotaxis would be a thing by some time in 2020. That didn't happen, obviously.
The latest bold claim comes from Tesla's Q4 2024 earnings call, in which the company reported a significant drop in year-over-year profits (US$2.3 billion, down from $7.9 billion in 2023).
The marque highlighted that Tesla would run its own taxi service for paid rides, consisting of a fleet of its own vehicles – as opposed to cars that private owners could offer up when they weren't in use, which Musk had previously promised.
The service is slated to take off in Austin, where Tesla moved its headquarters from California back in December 2021.
The company took to the Warner Bros. Studios lot in Los Angeles last October to unveil its Cybercab autonomous taxi, along with a Cybervan to ferry more people around sans a driver. The Cybercab was demoed doing rounds in the studio premises with passengers on board, but that's about it.
"Our purpose-built Robotaxi product – Cybercab – will continue to pursue a revolutionary 'unboxed' manufacturing strategy and is scheduled for volume production starting in 2026," Tesla noted in its earnings report.
Given Musk's not always accurate track record when it comes to timing announcements, we'll have to wait and see if Tesla robotaxis will be ferrying drivers around Austin come June.
Meanwhile, Waymo is going great guns. The Alphabet-owned robotaxi service made its rides available to everyone in Los Angeles last November, began merging onto LA freeways earlier this week to expand its operating radius, and is slated to launch in Atlanta and Austin later this year. Plus, it's set to start test rides in 10 more cities through 2025.
Source: Tesla
"AutoInsuranceEZ studied the frequency of fires—from all causes, including collisions—in automobiles in 2021. It found that hybrid vehicles, which have an internal combustion engine and an electric motor, had the most fires per 100,000 vehicles (3475), while vehicles with just an internal combustion engine placed second (1530 per 100,000). Fully electric vehicles had the fewest: 25 per 100,000. These findings were based on data from the National Transportation Safety Board and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics."
So EVs are 60+ times safer than ICE vehicles. As for battery reliability, it's been estimated that batteries could run a car a million miles if the rest of the car lasted that long. But they don't, so the idea is to pull old batteries out of salvaged vehicles and use them for electric grid backup instead of prematurely recycling them. Or are you talking about charging EVs in terms of reliability? Practically every building in the developed world has electricity. EVs come with their own charging cables. Fast chargers are already on major highways for long distance travel. If you can't keep an electric vehicle charged up, you probably run out of gas on a regular basis.
Robo-taxis will be no more popular than regular taxis. They are not a game changer.