Once upon a time, horse-drawn carts could be considered taxi services, and then cars with meters appeared. Now, in order to order a car and get to the desired place, you just need to select your location and the point where you want to go on your smartphone – after pressing just one button, the taxi will already be waiting for you. This is very convenient, but taxi services can be improved even further by putting cars on the road with an autopilot system. They will be able to communicate with each other and easily bypass traffic jams and other obstacles. In 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk wanted to launch an autonomous taxi service, but this was prevented by the coronavirus pandemic and many other problems, including those that we do not know about. In April 2024, the billionaire suddenly announced to everyone that the service would be launched in a few months.
Tesla driverless taxi in 2024
The new generation taxi service will be called Robotaxi and will be launched on August 8, 2024. At the moment, this is all that is known about Elon Musk’s new project, but even this couple of details caused a flurry of discussions on the Internet.
No one knows exactly what kind of cars will be used as taxis. The biography of Elon Musk, which was written by American journalist Walter Isaacson, says that these cars will externally resemble Cybertruck pickups. You can already find images of these cars on the Internet, but they were all drawn by amateur designers. Considering that the Cybertruck is still criticized for being too futuristic in appearance and not resistant to rust, I wish the company had done a better job with the appearance of its taxi.
There is also information that Tesla cars that already belong to someone will be used as taxis. Company representatives have occasionally mentioned that they want to release software that will allow car owners to authorize their car to be used as a taxi. Of course, for a kind of car rental, they would receive a percentage of the cost of the trips. The company intended to include all cars produced after 2016 in this program.
Big news for 2024:The Xiaomi SU7 electric car with autopilot is superior to Tesla on all fronts, and costs almost as much as Lada Vesta
Tesla autopilot
We don’t know which cars will be used as Tesla taxis. We also don't know how well they are suitable for autonomous driving on city roads.
Tesla is facing harsh criticism not only because of the ridiculous appearance of the Cybertruck pickup truck. There are even more serious problems, for example, due to errors in the operation of the autopilot, some people die on the roads. In 2020, we told how a Tesla car with autopilot rammed a police car, and a month later another car tried to hide from the police. In 2021, a big scandal arose when two men died, allegedly due to autopilot.
In its current state, Tesla Autopilot requires constant monitoring. Many people don’t understand this, so they turn it on and get distracted by the large display in the cabin – this is the main danger of the autopilot, created under the leadership of Elon Musk. If the company releases a robotic taxi with the current version of the system, people will imagine getting into an accident. However, it is possible that the company is preparing an update and the taxi will be safer.
It is worth recallingthat Tesla wanted to launch a taxi service in 2020
What unmanned vehicles taxis already exist
Elon Musk likes to make loud statements and then miss deadlines, so the news should be taken with a great deal of skepticism. Even if the service is launched in 2024, it will most likely be in test mode and only in one city. This is what many companies that are developing autonomous taxis do (yes, Tesla is far from a pioneer in this area). For example, Waymo autonomous taxi has been operating in some US states for a long time. And in Russia, Yandex is testing an autonomous taxi.
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Tesla is developing not only an autonomous taxi, but also robots. These human-like machines are known as Tesla Bot and Optimus and are expected to be able to operate in factories in the future. Considering that many employees of Elon Musk's factories are dissatisfied with their jobs, the idea of replacing them with robots looks very good. If you want to learn more about Tesla robots, read our article “Tesla is turning into a manufacturer of Optimus robots: they will soon appear in factories.”