Tesla loves to put on a show, and Thursday’s Robotaxi reveal might just be the flashiest of them all.
The electric vehicle maker is slated to unveil its much-hyped Robotaxi vehicle at Warner Bros. Discovery’s movie studio in Burbank, California. For those attending, doors will open at 5 p.m. PT, with remarks beginning at 7 p.m. PT today.
Tesla will livestream the “We, Robot” event on X, which Elon Musk owns. The automaker usually streams events live on its YouTube page but hasn’t yet said if it will do so for the Robotaxi reveal. However, that might be a smart option, considering the technical issues X’s livestreams have faced. And you can follow along with our own live blog of the event here.
The future will be streamed live
10/10, 7pm PT https://t.co/YJEjZIYoTA
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 9, 2024
Musk first teased the Robotaxi event in April, setting a date of August 8 for a reveal — a date that Tesla had to push back due to “an important design change to the front.”
The Robotaxi appears to have come at the expense of a next-generation $25,000 EV that Musk also promised. A few weeks after Musk announced the Robotaxi event, he slashed more than 10% of Tesla’s workforce and said the automaker was going “balls to the wall for autonomy.”
Musk has promised autonomous capabilities in Tesla vehicles for years. The company’s advanced driver-assistance system is rather brazenly named Full Self-Driving (FSD), even though it is not fully self-driving and requires a human driver to pay attention and take over if needed — a fact that is borne out again and again in drive-along videos that fans regularly post on social media.
When Musk first floated the idea of robotaxis in 2019, the idea was that some existing Teslas would be able to act as autonomous robotaxis with only software updates, potentially unlocking an opportunity for Tesla owners to make money from their cars when not driving them. That plan, which was supposed to result in millions of robotaxis on the road by 2020, has never been implemented. At the time, Musk said that in places where there aren’t enough people to share their cars, Tesla would provide a dedicated fleet of robotaxis.
We expect this reveal — which we remind you is at a Hollywood studio — to be less about the autonomous technology and more about the vehicle itself. Musk has said he wants to build a robotaxi without a steering wheel or pedals, and images of the vehicle that were included in Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk biography, which was published in 2023, reveal a Cybertruck-inspired, two-door, two-seater compact vehicle.
Whatever the event brings, TechCrunch will be following it live and bringing you the news as it happens, so stay tuned.
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