Tesla’s misleading “Robotaxi” promise
“Robotaxi” was supposed to be a software update to all Teslas since 2016
Forget the “One million robotaxis on the road by next year” promise from April 2019. Tesla now says it will unveil a robotaxi on August 8, possibly 2024 (they didn’t say which year, just August 8).
Does this mean new hardware, as in a whole new car? If so, a fundamental Tesla promise, first made on October 19, 2016 -- yes, 2016, not even 2019 -- would have been implicitly broken. This is because the whole idea of selling you a car already in 2016 was that it was supposed to be software-ungradeable to full self driving, aka Level 5 autonomy, aka robotaxi.
Here is a video of Elon Musk from April 22, 2019, repeatedly admitting as much:
Let’s keep the definition simple: Full self-driving, Level 5 and robotaxi are the same thing. It means a car that drives itself, with no person behind the wheel. It’s a taxi, but without the driver. This really should not be difficult to understand. It can drive you anywhere you want, at least inside the country -- in this case the USA for starters -- without any driver involved. The car could be empty, or your blind grandma could be in the back seat, being transported from one place to another. It’s like taking a taxi, without a human driver of any kind. This really should be obvious, but I belaboring the point because every time we talk about “full self driving” there are some people coming out of the woodwork claiming that it means something less than driverless: Full means full!
Anyway, going back to the main point, this is the transcript from Tesla’s October 19, 2016, press conference, with Elon Musk speaking, and this is how he opened the press conference:
https://www.xautoworld.com/tesla/transcript-elon-musk-autopilot-2-conference-call/
Basic news is that all cars exiting the factory have hardware necessary for Level 5 Autonomy so that’s in terms of Cameras, Compute Power, it’s in every car we make on the order 2,000 cars a week are shipping now with Level 5 literally meaning hardware capable of full self-driving for driver-less capability.
— Elon Musk, April 22, 2019
Here is the main point: If you bought a new Tesla at any point starting in October 2016, all that it was required to reach “Level 5 literally meaning hardware capable of full self-driving for driver-less capability” then your investment was protected. Your new 2016 Tesla was going to become “driver-less.”
August 8: What is it?
I don’t know what will be shown on August 8, but it had better be -- finally -- a software update to all existing Teslas produced since October 2016, enabling the promised functionality. This is opposed to new hardware, let alone a whole new car. Why? Because that was not what was promised. It was supposed to be a software update, not having to buy a new car eight years after your already new car was simply waiting for a software update.
Will Tesla make good on its 2016 -- and later 2019 -- promises about “full self driving” and “roboxaxi” and “Level 5 autonomy” (all the same thing) being a software update to all cars Tesla has made since October 2016? Or will this involve new hardware, perhaps even a whole new car? We will find out on August 8, perhaps even August 8, 2024 as opposed to August 8, 2054.