Tesla has delayed the launch of its robotaxi by about two months to October after its design team was told to rework some elements of the car. Bloomberg News reported. He said Thursday, citing a person familiar with the decision.
Tesla shares fell more than 8% to close at $241.03, ending an 11-session winning streak that had sent the stock up 44%.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Musk announced the robotaxi launch on August 8, but just before that, Reuters reported on April 5, citing sources, that Tesla had dropped its long-promised development of a lower-cost car, but would continue developing self-driving robotaxi on the same small car platform.
“Tesla has been promising ‘next year, next year’ for nearly a decade, and there’s no indication that they’re on track to actually deploy the self-driving system that they’ve consistently promised,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina and an expert on self-driving car law.
Musk has so far provided few details about the robotaxi fleet beyond announcing the launch date, saying only that some vehicles will be owned and operated by Tesla and others will be privately owned and available for rental through the Tesla network.
Analysts and industry experts say the race to develop self-driving systems and robotaxis will be difficult and take years, as they face numerous technical and regulatory hurdles.
“The event will be a disappointment, presumably because we’ll see cybertaxis rather than robotaxis. It will once again expose the huge hype. No one will be able to knit socks on the way to work or take a nap while being driven to grandma’s house,” said Craig Irwin, senior research analyst at Ross MKM.
To counter slowing electric vehicle sales, which generate more than 80% of Tesla’s quarterly revenue, Musk has been focusing on artificial intelligence, self-driving software, robotaxis and a humanoid robot named Optimus Prime.
During the company’s first-quarter earnings conference call in April, he said that Tesla would introduce “new models” by early 2025 using its current platforms and production lines.
On the call, he outlined an ambitious vision for diversifying Tesla’s business into artificial intelligence, humanoid robots and operating millions of self-driving cars — all based on software and hardware products that Tesla has yet to fully develop.
Sources told Reuters the billionaire made an unannounced visit to Beijing in April to discuss the rollout of fully self-driving software and other data transfer permissions.
