Tesla boss Elon Musk unveiled the firm’s long-awaited robotaxi, the Cybercab, at the Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, California on Thursday evening.
The futuristic-looking vehicle featuring two wing-like doors and no pedals or steering wheel deposited Mr Musk in front of an audience eager to hear details about a project he considers key to Tesla’s next chapter.
At the event, billed as “We, Robot,” the multi-billionaire reiterated his view that fully self-driving vehicles will be safer than those operated by humans and can even earn their owners money, through being rented out for rides.
But his projection that production on the Cybercab will begin some time “before 2027” raised questions about whether Mr Musk will once again blow past his own deadlines to deliver a fully self-driving vehicle that can compete with rivals like Alphabet-owned Waymo.
“I tend to be optimistic with time frames,” he quipped during the event, while discussing the Cybercab, which he said would cost less than $30,000 (£23,000).
Mr Musk also said he expected to see “fully autonomous unsupervised” technology available in Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y in Texas and California next year “with permission where ever regulators approve it.”
But that approval is far from guaranteed.
“It is a big chunk of metal driving on roads at high speeds, so safety concerns are big,” said Samitha Samaranayake, an associate professor in engineering at Cornell University.
Tesla’s self-driving ambitions rely on cameras that are cheaper than radar and Lidar (light detection and ranging) sensors that are the technology backbone of many competitors’ vehicles.
By teaching its cars to drive, Tesla plans to use artificial intelligence (AI) trained by the raw data it collects from its millions of vehicles.
But the research community “is not sold on whether the Tesla style of doing things can give the safety guarantees that we would like,” Mr Samaranayake said.
