Elon Musk unveiled three new Tesla high-tech products Thursday night at a highly anticipated event in California, including a surprise self-driving van.
Musk took to the stage in Tesla's long-awaited CyberCab, a driverless car that was scheduled to be unveiled at an evening event titled “We, Robot” at Warner Bros. Studios.
But a never-before-seen 20-seater Robovan and Tesla's latest generation of humanoid robots also made their debut at the event, which at one point was watched by more than 3.6 million people via livestream.
Tesla will deploy 20 two-door, fully autonomous “cyber taxis” to transport attendees around the studio, while dozens of its humanoid robots, Optimus, will serve drinks and interact with guests. We played rock, paper, scissors.
“The autonomous future is here,” Musk said. “We have 50 fully autonomous cars here tonight. You can see the Model Ys and the Cyber Cabs. All driverless.”
Notably, the two-door CyberCab lacks a steering wheel, pedals, and charging port. This electric vehicle features inductive charging capabilities and gullwing doors.
“There's no steering wheel, there's no pedals, so I hope it works,” Musk joked on stage.
Tesla's CEO said self-driving taxis will be available “by 2027” and cost less than $30,000 each and 20 cents per mile to operate.
“We plan to mass produce the CyberCab…probably – well, I tend to be a little optimistic about timing – in 2026. Before 2027, let’s just say. “I'm going to ask you to help me,” Musk said, acknowledging his many challenges. Early rollout promises dating back to 2020 have been broken.
His idea for CyberCab is to allow taxis to be hailed through Tesla's own app, allowing taxi owners to rent an entire fleet of driverless EVs.
But the prototype unveiled Thursday is not yet road-legal because, like the self-driving mode available in current Teslas on the market, it still requires real human supervision.
Mr. Musk expressed the company's expectations, saying, “We will go from fully autonomous driving with supervision to fully autonomous driving without supervision, where… you can sleep and wake up at your destination.''
Tesla's self-driving technology is different from its competitors, which already operate driverless robotaxis in some cities. While the technology is cost-effective in the long run, experts say it is risky and takes time to get up and running.
While Tesla's strategy relies solely on a combination of cameras and artificial intelligence to make driving decisions, competitors such as Waymo, Amazon's Zoox, General Motors' Cruises and many Chinese companies are using similar strategies. , as well as additional technologies such as radar, lidar, and complex mapping.
Roboban will also run on the same technology.
Musk also introduced Tesla's latest generation of Optimus robots in an effort to change the company's image from just a carmaker to an AI robotics company.
He said he expects faceless robot helpers to eventually cost less than $20,000 to $30,000 cars, making them affordable for anyone to own.
“So what can you do? You can do anything you want,” Musk told the crowd. “So you could be a teacher, babysit a kid, walk the dog, mow the lawn, buy groceries, be a friend, serve drinks, whatever you can think of. He will do whatever he can.”
“I think this will be the biggest product of any kind in history.”
