A lot is riding on Musk and Tesla’s ‘robotaxi’ event

Elon Musk and Tesla have pledged a game-changing moment in the company’s history Thursday night. It remains to be seen if they will actually deliver.

For the last decade, the electric vehicle maker’s CEO has vowed that true self-driving cars from Tesla were right around the corner. The latest promises will come when Tesla hosts an event at the Warner Bros. Studios lot in California to reveal its plans for self-driving “robotaxis.”

“I think it’s one of the most important events that Tesla has ever held,” said Dan Ives, analyst with Wedbush Securities and a Tesla bull. “I think it will be viewed five to 10 years from now as what the iPhone launch moment was for Apple.”

Tesla’s robotaxis would provide rides for passengers without a driver in the car. The full self-driving vehicles would compete with ride-hailing services, such as Uber and Lyft, and Tesla would also test programs involving driverless vehicles from Google’s Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise units.

Part of the Thursday’s program could be the introduction of a model that Tesla would build specifically for the robotaxi fleet, a “Cybercab” as Musk has referred to it.

But also expected are details for the company’s ride hailing service, using both Tesla-owned vehicles and cars owned by Tesla customers who might want to rent their cars for rides when not in use, kind of like an Airbnb for their vehicles. Tesla would take a cut of the revenue, with the rest of the money going to the vehicle’s owner.

But Tesla has been promising such a program was close at hand for the last five years. And even if the technology is as advanced as Musk likes to claim, getting regulatory approval to operate could be difficult. Accidents involving driverless vehicles could cause regulators to halt operations, even after they’ve been approved. It’s a risk that services using human drivers don’t face.

GM’s Cruise unit had its permits to operate driverless vehicles in California suspended by the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles after an accident in which a pedestrian who had already been struck by a car with a driver was dragged under a Cruise vehicle for 20 feet, resulting in serious injuries.

Musk and his supporters insist that this will change the basic economics of the way people get from point A to point B, which will in turn propel Tesla stock to a valuation that would dwarf any current company’s market value. Musk’s promises about autonomous cars have boosted Tesla stock for years.

They predict Tesla could not only make more money selling rides than actually selling cars but also increase demand from buyers who make back their purchase prices by renting their cars out for rides.

Tesla and Musk have made promises many, many times before about autonomous vehicle capabilities and when true self-driving would be available. So far Tesla has not lived up to those promises. And, beyond the question of the technology, there are significant regulatory hurdles that will need to be overcome.

Tesla has long offered what it calls Full Self-Driving or FSD as an option on its cars, currently priced at $8,000. But despite its name, Tesla says that drivers need to continue to sit in the driver’s seat, ready to take over control of the vehicle, even when in FSD mode.

In a July call with investors, Musk said he expected to have “unsupervised (driving) possibly by the end of this year,” adding “I would be shocked if we cannot do it next year.” But he also conceded, “obviously my predictions on this have been overly optimistic in the past.”

In fact, Tesla has been about a year away from true full-self driving for many years now if you listen to Musk’s past statements.

“I’m the boy who cried FSD. But I think we’ll be better than humans by the end of this year,” he said in a call with investors in July 2023, before adding: “I’ve been wrong in the past. I may be wrong this time.”

While Tesla and Musk have insisted that FSD has met the goal of being safer than human drivers, outsiders who have tested the service have found the vehicles susceptible to crashing if not for drivers taking control frequently. One independent testing service, AMCI Testing, found that drivers needed to take control every 13 miles driven, on average.

“You’d have three accidents every hour. That is thousands of times worse than competing technology,” said Gordon Johnson, an analyst who is a longtime harsh critic of Tesla and Musk. He predicts Thursday’s Robotaxi rollout is “going to be a massive disappointment for investors.”

Even some of those who are bullish on Tesla’s ability to live up to its promises think that the service is at best three to five years away.

“We’re looking at disengagements at 3% of miles driven. While 97% of the way there sounds close, it’s not even close,” said Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, about the number of times that a human driver needs to take control. “It has to be well above 99%. And to go from 95 or 97% to 99% is really hard. And then there’s the question of how many 9’s the regulators will want to see. Is it 99.9%, 99.999%?”

“I think it’ll take two years to get the technology right,” Munster said. “And two to three more years to get the needed regulatory approval.”

While Munster is optimistic about Tesla’s ability to succeed in the future, he suspects the event could leave investors unimpressed.

“They’ve been talking about it for years,” he said. “The biggest question is about timing. If it’s anything more than three months out, then investors will take it with a grain of salt.”

Even a bull like Ives said it’s crucial that Musk break through the skepticism that abounds, given his past promises.

“This is a fork in the road moment for Musk and Tesla,” he said. “Either you walk away from the event as a jaw dropping moment, or you walk away with a shrug of shoulders event.”