In 2019, Elon Musk boldly promised a million Tesla robotaxis on the road within a year. A year later, he said they would functionally be ready, but there could be a regulatory holdup. He promised robotaxis again in 2022, saying Tesla would unveil a product the next year and start mass production by 2024. Today, robotaxis are a real thing — there are at least several hundred self-driving taxis on American roads, operated by companies including Alphabet’s Waymo, General Motors’ Cruise and Amazon’s Zoox. None of them, however, are Teslas. Later this week, Tesla is hosting a much-hyped event to showcase its progress on Musk’s long string of promises to turn the leading electric vehicle maker into a mass-market network of self-driving cabs. This isn’t just a sideline for the company — when Musk talks about Tesla’s future, he pitches it not as a carmaker but as a major player in artificial intelligence and robotics. Robotaxis are a central part of that story. As Musk has described it over the years, the network will be made of Tesla customers who can send their driverless cars out to pick up passengers for extra money when they’d otherwise be parked. Robotaxis have a special place in the pursuit of a driverless revolution, even as the last two years have been a tipping point for all sorts of unmanned vehicles — from sidewalk delivery robots to John Deere’s self-driving tractors to trials of fully autonomous trucks. “It captures the imagination,” Richard Bishop, who runs a consultancy focused on automated driving, said of robotaxis. “People can equate this with their own car and get a vision of ‘wow, one day the car in my driveway is going to be automated too if this is possible in 2024.’” Unlike the actual, functional robocar firms — which are starting small and scaling up — Musk’s idea aimed for the mass market from the beginning. And Tesla’s struggles are indicative of some of the big issues facing this particular vision of the American mobility future, where fast-moving tech intersects with longstanding frameworks of public regulation. Ahead of Tesla’s robotaxi event on Thursday, some analysts are already warning that the technology is far from ready for widespread use. Though many expect a Cybercab prototype reveal, Musk has offered few specifics. That’s raised a host of questions and predictions about what exactly it will show. “We believe (a widescale) Tesla robotaxi deployment is unlikely within the coming years,” UBS analysts wrote in a late September research note. “That is not to say Tesla isn't making technological progress, but Tesla needs to show that the tech is ready and safe, deal with a myriad of local regulations (city by city), and (potentially) figure out logistics and operations of a transportation network company.” Earlier this summer, Tesla said that the timing of its robotaxi deployment depends on technological advancements (it can’t start offering rides to customers until full self-driving can be used unsupervised) and regulatory approval. If Tesla’s robotaxi lacks a steering wheel — a matter Musk has left unanswered — the company would need to seek government approval for an exception to the Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. In fact, when Bishop attended this summer’s Automated Road Transportation Symposium — a gathering of top experts to discuss the future of driverless vehicles — he noted no one there was “talking about the vaporous Tesla robotaxi.” The current robotaxi pioneers, like Waymo and Cruise, are grappling with a whole new set of issues that have come to the fore as their vehicles have hit the streets. A federal investigation by U.S. auto safety regulators forced Cruise to recall its entire fleet last year after one of its robotaxis struck and dragged a pedestrian. Cruise has since relaunched and in August, it announced a multi-year partnership to offer driverless rides through Uber starting next year. Waymo is currently the dominant robotaxi platform, with its autonomous cars giving more than 100,000 paid rides a week across Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix. Under its own partnership with Uber, Waymo plans on expanding to Austin and Atlanta early next year. Its vehicles, too, have been involved in collisions, though the company’s data claims Waymo cars are still significantly safer than human-driven ones. At the federal level, the industry is seeking regulatory certainty. Its main trade group, the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association, has called for a nationwide policy framework to clarify AV rules throughout the country, though that is unlikely to happen in an election year or be an early priority for a new president. Providers also need to worry about making the robotaxi model profitable, easing concerns about job displacement and opposition from powerful unions, and avoiding the crosshairs of new restrictions in the U.S.’s tech competition with China. “Nothing that Tesla's done so far has had any significant bearing on robotaxis,” Bishop told DFD. But even if that changes after Thursday, he added, “they would be setting up what is a completely new enterprise.”
| 
