In Thursday night’s invitation-only reveal, CEO Elon Musk said the company “hopes” to be producing its robotaxi by 2027 at a price point of less than $30,000.
Tesla (TSLA -6.73%) CEO Elon Musk has been promising to deliver driverless taxis for a decade. Last night, the company finally showed a concept-car version of what a Tesla robotaxi might be like — and in a bit of surprise, it revealed an autonomous bus as well.
But details were thin. The invitation-only event, held on a Warner Brothers movie lot, was long on futuristic shtick and short on the substance that investors had hoped to see and hear.
Frankly, it left me with more questions than answers. But here’s what we know.
Tesla’s Cybercab: What we learned on Thursday night
The vehicle itself is called the Tesla Cybercab. It’s a low-slung two-door coupe, seemingly an odd choice for a taxicab. It’s an electric vehicle, of course, and can be recharged wirelessly via induction, meaning that it doesn’t require a human (or a robot) to plug it in manually.
Musk said that Tesla “hopes” to be producing the Cybercab by 2027, and that consumers will be able to buy a Cybercab for under $30,000. The company currently has 21 of them, he said.
He didn’t, however, explain where Tesla plans (or hopes) to produce the vehicle, or share any details about the hardware under its show-car skin.
Musk also said that he expects Tesla to have “unsupervised” Full Self-Driving available on Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in Texas and California next year. Full Self-Driving, or FSD, is Tesla’s deluxe advanced driver-assist system. Despite the name, it currently requires a human driver at the wheel ready to take control at any time.
Tesla began referring to FSD as “supervised FSD” earlier this year, presumably in hopes of dodging regulatory scrutiny.
Near the end of the event, Musk also revealed the Tesla Robovan, a 20-seat autonomous bus with styling reminiscent of a 1930s streamliner locomotive. No details around pricing or production of the Robovan were provided.
The Tesla Cybercab raises more questions than it answers
To be blunt, the Cybercab doesn’t look to be anywhere close to production. It looks like a concept car, a mockup intended to show the direction of an automaker’s thinking.
With any other automaker, I’d say this is at least two and a half years away from production. That’s just the nuts-and-bolts work of turning a show car into a vehicle that can be mass-produced at scale, never mind the autonomous technology.
Of course, it’s possible that the Cybercab is somewhat closer to production than it appears to be. Tesla has never been a typical automaker.
Let’s dwell on that for a moment.
A typical automaker would have looked at the success of the Model Y crossover and moved quickly to follow it up — perhaps with a one-size-down model. Something like a Tesla-flavored Chevrolet Bolt, maybe, a smaller four-seat model with good range and a starting price under $30,000.
You know, the car that Tesla used to say it was working toward. A typical automaker would have had that car in production by now — or maybe three years ago.
Instead, Tesla launched the Cybertruck, a niche product that so far has had significant quality problems.
It’s worth remembering that the Cybertruck was first revealed way back in 2019 — and the Cybercab is the first new model Tesla has shown since then.
Many things have happened since 2019. For starters, Waymo now has autonomous taxis up and running around the United States. But more broadly, five years is a long time for a cutting-edge innovative automaker — one valued at more than 60 times earnings this morning — to go without new high-volume products.
What does the Cybercab mean for Tesla stock?
But what about the stock? Tesla’s shares were down almost 9% shortly after the market opened on Friday morning. That might just be a reflection of the lack of specifics in last night’s presentation, not necessarily an indicator of how the stock will perform once investors have thought through the details.
But I’m skeptical that this thing is going to be reality any time soon — and I’m even more skeptical that it should be.