Tesla’s biggest gamble ever: Musk bets the future of electric vehicle giant on “Cybercab” and truly autonomous cars | Opinion
You might think some of Tesla’s past moves – cutting prices, actually building the Cybertruck, Ludicrous Mode – were out there, but truly, you won’t believe where the brand is going next, as Elon Musk prepares to gamble the future of the company on EVs that really, genuinely can drive themselves, and something called “Cybercab”.
Musk’s grand vision, which he previewed in a recent earnings call and is expected to unveil in full in August, is that your Tesla will actually become more valuable after you buy it, because it will be able to earn you passive income while you sleep, as it does shifts as an autonomous Uber driver.
Although you can forget the brand “Uber”, because Musk plans to crush that, too, with his own ride-hailing business – he has shown off screen shots of the app you’ll use to call, or run, a Cybercab.
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Tesla is already heavily invested in autonomous-driving technology, particularly in other markets where, unlike Australia, you can actually use the brand’s Full Self Driving features, which allow you to drive point-to-point through any kind of city or freeway situation, without operating the steering wheel or pedals check it out here.
As Musk himself said recently, in the near future, “cars that are not autonomous will be like driving a horse and using a flip phone”.
Andrew Hawkins, transportation editor at The Verge, is a long-time Musk and Tesla watcher and he believes the company is gearing up to really double down on self-driving cars being the future of everything.
“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that he’s betting the entire company on this proposition that you will be able to have your own self-driving Tesla at some point in the future,” Hawkins explained.
“Musk has been promising this thing called the ‘Tesla Network’ since 2017, and once we have fully autonomous vehicles that would mean that your car, instead of losing value as soon as you buy it, it will actually appreciate and gain value, because you’ll be able to earn passive income from it.
“You’ll go to sleep and you’ll be able to send your car out to go and start picking people up and doing taxi trips and earning you income.
“It’s very clear that Elon thinks this is something that’s going to define Tesla’s next stage of growth, this robo-taxi application.”
Hawkins also added that Tesla was seen, by some commentators at least, as in need of a turnaround, or a boost to its profile and profits.
“While Tesla was only the sixth company in the history of the US to be worth more than a trillion, back in 2021, that value has now fallen by more than half, with the stock down 40 per cent this year alone,” he said.
We’ve previously reported at EV Central on how Tesla believe it is about to achieve a “Chat GPT moment” of breakthrough within autonomous tech, thanks to the application of serious Artificial Intelligence systems to the various problems it presents.
You can read about that here.
Musk said the new service would be a mix between Uber and Airbnb, where a Tesla owner can decide if and when they want their vehicle to go to work – and for whom.
Tesla added in a statement: “We believe the Tesla software experience is best-in-class across all our products, and plan to seamlessly layer ride-hailing into the Tesla App.”
While owners will be able to remove their car from the hire fleet at any time they will also be able to decide whether their Tesla can be used “by friends and family or only by five-star users or by anyone at any time”.
Tesla has announced that more news about Cybercab will drop on August 8.
Elon’s not really a car guy, is he.