Yesterday, Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk gave an interview on CNBC from Giga Texas. The interview mainly focused on the automaker’s planned Robotaxi launch in Austin in June.
The US Secretary for Transportation Sean Duffy also visited Tesla HQ at Giga Texas yesterday. He took a look at Tesla’s Robotaxi vehicles and how the production cars and Cybertrucks were autonomously driving themselves to the outbound delivery lot. He also took a ride in an autonomous Tesla robot car running around the factory.
Tesla Robotaxi in Austin in June
CNBC’s David Faber asked Elon Musk what gives you the confidence that the Tesla Robotaxi service will start in Austin, Texas by the end of June. Musk replied:
We have cars driving 24/7 with drivers in the cars, and we see essentially no interventions. So, we wanna be very careful with the first introduction of Unsupervised Full Self-Driving, meaning that there’s the cars driving around with no one in it.
And sometimes no one in it at all. So, it’s going to pick someone up. So, the car has to be incredibly safe. We have thousands of cars that are being tested, which is creating some strange situations where we just drive.
It’s just a bizarre number of Teslas driving past people’s houses, with them like, what’s going on?
Yeah, it’s looking good for Austin next month.
So, Elon Musk is confident that autonomous Tesla robotaxis will be roaming the streets of Austin, Texas, next month.
However, the host of the show said “by the end of June”, which suggests that the unsupervised taxi service by Tesla is not going to start on 1st June as most of the Tesla fans and enthusiast community is expecting. Slight delays might end up pushing the date towards the end of June.
Tesla is also testing its Unsupervised FSD robotaxis in San Francisco, California, as well (with safety drivers present). However, the recent interview by Musk with CNBC had no mention of California for the June launch (watch below).
Tesla Robotaxi Service Ramp-Up
The interview host asked Elon Musk that the reports that the initial batch of Tesla robotaxis will consist of 10-12 units only. To which Musk confirmed “yeah, yeah, for the first week”.
Tesla is going to start the robotaxi service in Austin, TX, cautiously in the first phase. After initial validation for safety, the automaker is going to gradually ramp up the deployment.
‘We want to deliberately take it slow. I mean, we start with 1,000 or 10,000 on day one, but we don’t think that would be prudent,” Elon Musk said.
“So, we’ll start with probably ten for a week, then increase it to 20, 30, 40. And I think, by say, will probably be at 1,000 within a few weeks. And then we’ll expand to other cities,” Musk explained.
Hurdles in Robotaxi Launch
The US Patent Office (USPTO) has denied Tesla’s request to register the name ‘Robotaxi’. This is a roadblock Tesla is facing in moving forward with the name of the its autonomous taxi service.
Tesla also called it the ‘Cybercab’, but Tesla is facing issues patenting this name as well, as reported by TechCrunch. This issue can interrupt the beginning of the service. Tesla can’t call it the ‘Tesla Robotaxi’ service or probably isn’t going to be able to call it the ‘Tesla Cybercab’ either.
Tesla unveiled the Cybercab robotaxi vehicle last year in a highly anticipated event at the Warner Bros. Studio in Hollywood. It’s astonishing to see that the automaker didn’t obtain a patent for the name of the service or vehicle in the past ~7 monts or even prior to the unveiling.
Naming registration issues and a possible safety incident in the early batch of the Robotaxi vehicles might delay or disrupt the service.
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- Tesla is rapidly increasing Robotaxi service area in Austin, Texas
- Tesla Robotaxi service to go public in September, automaker acquires state-wide license to operate in Texas
- Tesla Robotaxi service to expand to new cities as the automaker opens jobs for Autopilot car operators
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- Tesla starts Robotaxi service in the SF Bay Area, but it’s different from Austin
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