Tesla says robotaxi is coming in 2024, and it won't have a steering wheel
Tesla's fleet of robotaxis will be unleashed onto the world in 2024, and they will truly be autonomous, with no option for human driver to take over.
During Tesla's earnings call Wednesday, company CEO Elon Musk said the robotaxi is "highly optimized for autonomy" and won't have a steering wheel or pedals.
Musk hinted at other "exciting" innovations, saying the goal is to achieve the lowest cost-per-mile possible, and that the cost of taking a Tesla robotaxi would be lower than riding a bus.
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"I think it will be a very powerful product," he said, adding that it will be a "massive driver for Tesla's growth."
The robotaxi will be unveiled sometime next year, and the company plans to mass produce it by 2024, Musk said.
Musk mentioned the robotaxi vehicle at the company's recent "Cyber Rodeo" event, saying that it will look "quite futuristic." And he's been talking about robotaxis since 2019, though at that point Musk was referring to the company's standard lineup of cars, which are all capable to some degree of autonomous driving.
Reaching that goal of full autonomy has proven elusive for Tesla, however. During the call, Musk said that the company's Full Self Driving tech has been extraordinarily difficult to perfect.
"Of any technology development I've ever been involved in, I've never really seen more false dawns, where it seems that we're gonna break through, but we don't, as I've seen in Full Self Driving," he said. "To solve Full Self Driving you actually have to solve real world artificial intelligence, which nobody has solved."
"I think we will achieve that this year," he added.
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
