Tesla tsar Elon Musk took a brief break from his duties as Donald Trump’s propagandist-in-chief to reveal the EV manufacturer’s next big thing: a self-driving taxi.
His Cybercab is an entirely puzzling proposition, though. We are used to taxis being reasonably large and practical cars with space for four or more passengers, a big boot for their luggage and which are easy to get in and out of. It’s not by accident that taxi drivers love the stately Skoda Superb.
But Tesla wants to put taxi drivers out of business, so doesn’t care what they think. Maybe that’s why the robot taxi is almost the exact opposite of a big Skoda or Mercedes. It’s a strict two-seater, low-slung like a sports car with doors that open like a Lamborghini. A taxi should have a broad range of abilities but the Cybercab is emphatically niche.
There are no pedals or steering wheel - you let the car know where you want to go via an app or using a map on the car’s 21-inch display screen. Nor is there a charging socket. Instead, the taxi replenishes its battery through wireless inductive charging.
Musk says it will go into production in 2026 and cost less than $30,000; on past form, those claims should be treated with a sack of salt (for example, the Tesla Roadster, announced in 2017 and promised for 2020, has vanished, spirited into an automotive witness protection scheme…).
Tesla has been talking about making a robot taxi since before Trump was last in the White House, so it’s fair to say the Cybercab has been hotly anticipated. But the pairing of self-driving tech with the sports car body is bizarre.
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Tesla investors seemed to agree; shares fell 9% after last Thursday’s launch event in Los Angeles. There are also questions over when replacements for the Model 3/Y duo and even older Model S/X will arrive. Musk claimed the Cybertaxi could turn Tesla into a $5 trillion company, up from today’s mere $700 billion.
Earlier this year, Tesla pulled the plug on development of a smaller, cheaper car, the Model 2. It doesn’t seem a leap to assume that the Cybertaxi is essentially a refashioned Model 2, with the absence of steering wheel and pedals emphasising Tesla’s self-driving tech.
But self-driving cars rely on more than their own technology, including the battery of cameras, sensors and chips that make the car steer, brake and accelerate; they also need super-accurate mapping software and clear and consistent road infrastructure, whether that be lines painted on the road, traffic lights or road signs.
How close we are to autonomous Teslas being unleashed on our roads remains unclear. Yes, Model 3/Ys with the company’s full self-drive gadgetry on board will be allowed to take to the highways of Texas and California from next year, but it will be years before they - or any other makers’ autonomous cars - are able to make sense of today’s tangle of roadworks and makeshift traffic lights around Belfast’s Grand Central Station.
Elon Musk wants to put taxi drivers out of business. But Tesla’s Cybercab is the exact opposite of the big Skodas we’re used to - it’s a strict two-seater, low-slung like a sports car with doors that open like a Lamborghini, no steering wheel and no pedals
In other Tesla news, Musk also introduced an updated version of Optimus, the creepy humanoid robot. He cheerily says that there is an 80% chance that artificial intelligence robots like Optimus will be good for humanity - a chilling prospect for those of us concerned about the other 20%, especially if the droids back Trump with the fervour of their creator.
Tesla also showed a streamlined container on wheels called the Robovan. As with the taxi, it does without a steering wheel or pedals and will apparently be able to carry up to 20 passengers or a lot of cargo - a concept which sounds like it might be a more useful taxi than Tesla’s actual Cybercab.
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It’s worth noting that there are already self-driving cars. In San Francisco and Phoenix, with Los Angeles and Austin imminent, you can hitch a ride in a Waymo. Originally a Google project, it uses Jaguar I-Paces festooned with sensors and cameras to whisk passengers from A to B with no driver at the wheel.
But it is in China where autonomous cars are really accelerating. Robotaxi outfit Apollo Go is aiming for 1,000 cars on the streets of Wuhan by the end of this year. Chinese companies are pouring billions into intelligent driving software and autonomy. Goldman Sachs predicts the global robotaxi market to be worth more than $25 billion by 2030. Expect legacy European manufacturers to increasingly turn to China for the tech they need to make their cars run and stay competitive.
Back to the Future was almost right - we’ll still needs roads where we’re going. We’ll just not need a driver.
