Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company’s most important products this year and next will not be cars but rather software that will help drive them autonomously and humanoid robots.
“It will be a huge shock to me if we don’t make fully autonomous driving safer than human driving this year,” said Musk, who has built his reputation by challenging business skeptics in electric cars and rockets. He also predicted that fully autonomous driving would become “the most important source of profitability for Tesla”.
But such bold promises from the world’s most famous billionaire face major challenges, including technical and regulatory hurdles. Tesla and other self-driving technology companies have failed for years to achieve their goals of developing driverless software.
Some Tesla drivers are buying up to $12,000 worth of self-driving software, based on expectations that their cars will soon achieve full autonomy. About 60,000 Tesla drivers are also testing the latest self-driving software, a process of a magnitude that no other companies in the same field can match.
(Autonomous driving) is going to be financially viable,” Musk said, noting that automated taxis would boost the utility of the car fivefold as owners could send it to run when they didn’t need it.
But even if Tesla succeeds in accessing the technology, it will have to come under more stringent regulatory scrutiny before deploying fleets of self-driving taxis to the streets. US auto safety regulators have already opened an investigation into the safety of the driver assistance system developed by Tesla after accidents in which cars collided with parked emergency services vehicles.
Musk also said that engineers are working on launching a human-like robot called Optimus next year, adding that it could solve the problem of labor shortages around the world.
Tesla Inc. shares wiped out about $109 billion off its valuation in the course of a single day after the electric vehicle maker’s fourth-quarter earnings and outlook failed to impress investors.
Shares of the Austin, Texas-based electric vehicle maker plunged nearly 12% on Thursday after an earnings call the previous day that was long on a humanoid robot called Optimus and short on new vehicles. The stock closed at $829 in New York, the lowest since Oct. 14. The decline was the second biggest on the S&P 500 Index on Thursday. The last time Tesla erased more than $100 billion in market value in a single day was Nov. 9.
During Tesla’s fourth-quarter earnings call Wednesday, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said that the company would not bring any new vehicles to market this year. That was a letdown for many who assumed Musk’s promise of an “updated product road map” would include bullish news about the Cybertruck, Semi truck and plans for future, cheaper models.
