Musk finally unveils his long-promised robotaxi

Elon Musk has been promising a car that can drive itself for years, promising a series of revelations that never materialized. On Thursday, he will finally show the world Tesla’s robotaxi.

The company’s CEO is a master showman whose hype skills have helped make Tesla the world’s best-selling electric vehicle and boost the company’s stock price, making it the richest man on the planet in the process.

And he’s currently putting those talents to good use in Republican Donald Trump’s service, echoing the billionaire presidential candidate’s dire warnings about migrants and a crumbling America, even during an exuberant appearance at a Trump rally head on of the week that was widely mocked.

Little is known about what to expect at Thursday’s unveiling at an event called “We, Robot” (a play on Isaac Asimov’s sci-fi classic “I, Robot”) at Warner Studios Brothers, near Los Angeles.

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The launch will be watched closely, both by boosters who are convinced he is a world-changing visionary, and by skeptics who increasingly see an emperor in worn-out clothes.

“We believe large-scale Tesla robotaxi deployment is unlikely in the coming years,” UBS said in a note last month.

“That’s not to say Tesla won’t make technological progress, but Tesla has to prove the technology is ready and safe, deal with a myriad of local regulations, and (potentially) figure out the logistics and operations of a grid company. transportation”.

On the bullish side, Wedbush analysts predicted Thursday’s event will be a “seminal and historic day” for Tesla, ushering in a “new chapter of growth” for autonomous technology.

‘Important changes’

If Tesla successfully demonstrates a taxi that can drive itself, it won’t be the first.

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Other companies, such as Google’s Waymo and General Motors Cruise, have been operating highly regulated pilot programs for several years.

But, says Musk, with characteristic bravura, it will be the best.

The South African businessman pushed back the date of the event, which was originally planned for August, “to make some important changes that I think would improve the vehicle,” he said in July.

He shrugged off regulatory questions about a technology company that has so far only proven itself on a limited scale and is not yet seen by most of the general public.

“Once we demonstrate that something is safe enough or significantly safer than humans, we find that regulators support the deployment of that capability,” he said at the time.

Forget that in 2016 he said a fully automated car was two years away, or that a year later he was touting a vehicle in 2019 so smart customers could sleep while it drove them.

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As many automakers have found, autonomous driving is complicated.

While many cars today have limited automation, which theoretically allows the driver to hand over some of the tedium of driving to an on-board computer, the person behind the wheel still has to pay attention and jump in if the car does something unpredictable.

That’s because computers, unlike people, aren’t very good at reacting to unexpected events or situations they’ve never seen before, so self-driving vehicles have a history of doing things that a human being would never do.

The driver is, in any case, legally responsible for what the car does. Tesla is facing a series of lawsuits stemming from fatal crashes in which drivers may have believed they were safe in the hands of the car’s computer.

It’s against this backdrop that some industry watchers are taking Thursday’s expected announcements with a grain of salt.

“It seems likely that we’ll see a fancy demonstration of a sleek-looking prototype, allowing Musk to claim some kind of victory for first impressions, even as the rough outlines of what he’s promising barely stand up to scrutiny” , Andrew wrote. Hawkins of tech outlet The Verge.

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“The bullish investor hype will give it enough cover to continue making misleading statements about what it is and isn’t autonomous.

“And security experts and competitors who try to warn about the dangers of their approach will likely be drowned out or dismissed by their most ardent fans.”

Source: AFP