Tesla presented this week a robotaxi with an unusual design, a two-seater sports coupe called Cybercab, which has worried investors and analysts, carries Reuters.
CEO Elon Musk unveiled the prototype at an event held near Los Angeles, announcing that production will begin in 2026, with a price below $30,000.
However, Musk did not explain how a taxi with only two seats could meet the needs of families or passengers traveling with luggage, leaving the impression that the vehicle would be aimed at a narrow area of the market.
Investors criticized the design, and Tesla shares fell 9% on Wall Street on Friday.
“When you think of a taxi, you think of something that can carry more than two people,” said Jonathan Elfalan, director of vehicle testing for Edmunds.com.
Transportation experts suggest that robotaxis should offer more room and sliding doors.
Musk has announced that he wants to make robotaxis cheaper than public transportation, with an operating cost of 20 cents per mile for the Cybercab, but did not provide details on plans for mass production or regulatory approvals.
Musk also did not say how Tesla could beat Waymo, the company of the Alphabet group, which already operates robotaxis in some US cities.
Waymo has a fleet of about 700 Jaguar Land Rovers that can seat four passengers, similar to the seating capacity of Amazon’s Zoox robot taxis.
Former Waymo CEO John Krafcik said Tesla’s design looked “more fun than bad” and that the two-door configuration presented challenges for elderly passengers and the disabled.
It will be essential for Tesla to bring the robotaxi to market and capture a market that is still developing and tightly regulated.
This year Musk abandoned plans to build a smaller, cheaper vehicle amid slowing demand for electric vehicles and shifted his focus to Tesla’s autonomous ambitions. The robotaxi business could catapult Tesla’s valuation to $5 trillion, he said, from about $700 billion now.
“Two-seaters have been recommended for decades as passenger vehicles. They haven’t gone away at all,” said Sam Fiorani, vice president at research firm AutoForecast Solutions.
Eventually Tesla will have to build a larger robotaxis, he said.
Blake Anderson, senior investment analyst at Carson Group, a Tesla investor, said if the Cybercab is supposed to be a lower-cost mass-market model to broaden Tesla’s appeal, the two-seat design doesn’t make sense.
“Maybe it’s a way I can market something quickly,” he said.
2024-10-13 06:59:00
#Tesla #robotaxi #design #criticized #industry #taxi #carry #people
