Los Angeles, United States.- Elon Musk finally showed off Tesla’s promised robotaxi on which the company’s future is betting: the Cybercab.
He also presented an unexpected vehicle: a type of passenger van called Robovan.
In the presentation – baptized “We, Robot”, in a play on words with Isaac Asimov’s classic science fiction work “I, Robot” -, the CEO of Tesla showed the prototype of the robotaxi with two seats and butterfly wing doors. Musk reported that the Cybercab electric and autonomous vehicle would have a price of less than 30 thousand dollars (about 583 thousand 631 pesos) and would be available before 2027.
Regarding the electric van, he pointed out that he seeks to make it an urban transport with a high passenger density.
The launches, held at the Warner Bros. Discovery film studio, came after years of promises by Musk of a self-driving car, among a series of revelations that never materialized. The start of the exhibition was delayed 53 minutes, since, according to Musk, a person in the audience had a medical emergency. The event, closely watched by fans and detractors alike, marks “a historic day” for Tesla, opening a “new chapter of growth” for autonomous technology, according to analysts at financial advisory firm Wedbush. However, UBS noted that a large-scale implementation of Tesla’s robotaxi is unlikely within the next few years. “Tesla needs to show that the technology is ready and secure, that it deals with a host of local regulations and (potentially) solves the logistics and operations of a transportation network company,” the global financial services firm noted last month. Despite Tesla’s slowing sales and all of Musk’s years of premature predictions that brand-name self-driving cars were just around the corner, investors drove the company’s stock higher in recent months to waiting for a product that was really ready, or at least close to being ready. In July, the richest man on the planet postponed the date of the event, originally scheduled for August, to make “some changes that would improve the vehicle.” Companies like Waymo, backed by Google-Alphabet, and Cruise, from General Motors (GM), have already operated autopilot programs for some years. However, Musk, bold, assures that he will be the best. In 2016, the South African billionaire stated that a fully automated car would be a reality in the next two years, and a year later he was thinking about a vehicle for 2019 so safe that the user could even sleep while being transported. Musk has promised nothing less than a new era for transportation, in which he has raised the possibility of Tesla owners letting their cars function as robotaxis when not in use, earning money while they sleep or are at work. However, unlike people, computers are not as good at reacting to unpredictable events or situations they haven’t encountered before, which is why self-driving vehicles have a history of doing things a human would. I would never do.
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