Elon Musk says Tesla will launch ‘robotaxi’ in August; what is it?

Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to social media to announce that his electric vehicle manufacturing company will launch “robotaxi” on August 8 this year. “Tesla Robotaxi unveil on 8/8 (sic),” he tweeted, without specifying further details.

The announcement comes at a time when the EV supplier has been grappling with sluggish sales in the domestic market and competition from cheaper Chinese EVs globally.

The robotaxi, said analysts, is in line with Musk’s long-reiterated vision of launching electric cars that will be completely driverless, requiring minimal human intervention. Although Tesla currently offers self-driving EVs, the cars require human supervision to a significant extent, they pointed out.

For instance, the company offers a full-self driving variant of Tesla Model 3, for which it charges an additional $12,000, apart from the car’s price of $40,000. However, the company notes that “the currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous”, _CNN _reported.

So, what exactly is robotaxi?

As the name suggests, Tesla plans to introduce the EV as a cab that it will operate by itself. While Tesla is yet to formally release the model, prototype and features related to the robotaxi, the company had shared details related to it in April 2019. The EV would be fully autonomous, and could last up to 11 years, it had predicted.

Tesla had then also noted that it could drive up to 1 million miles, allowing the company to earn around $30,000 in profit each year.

Back then, Tesla had expected to operate robotaxis by 2020. However, the launch has since been delayed. Musk had acknowledged that he could miss the deadline set by him. “The only criticism and it’s a fair one, (is that) sometimes I’m not on time. But I get it done and the Tesla team gets it done,” he said at an April 2019 event.