Hours later, Musk posted on X that a “Tesla Robotaxi” will be unveiled August 8.
Tesla Robotaxi unveil on 8/8 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2024Reports have swirled for years that Tesla was working on these two vehicles.
Musk has been promising autonomous capabilities in Tesla vehicles for years.
Tesla vehicles come standard with a driver-assistance system branded as Autopilot.
Tesla vehicles are not self-driving.
Tesla is reportedly abandoning its plan to build a lower-cost EV thought to cost around $25,000, according to Reuters, despite that vehicle’s status as a pivotal product for the company’s overall growth.
The company will instead focus its efforts on a planned robotaxi that is being built on the same small EV platform that was also supposed to power the lower-cost vehicle.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed, without proof, that Reuters is “lying” in a post on his social media platform, X, and did not dispute any specific details.
He also responded with an eyes emoji to another post that effectively summed up the Reuters report in different words.
Tesla was reportedly targeting a price of around $25,000 for the next-generation EV.
Tesla is dropping prices of unsold Model Y SUVs in the U.S. by thousands of dollars in an attempt to clear out an unprecedented backlog of inventory.
The discounts come as Tesla once again made far more vehicles than it sold in the last quarter.
The company built 433,371 vehicles in the first quarter but only shipped 386,810, likely adding more than 40,000 EVs to its inventory glut.
It announced a $1,000 price hike was coming to the Model Y, its most popular vehicle, on April 1.
He has largely blamed the struggle on high interest rates, all while his company dramatically cut prices on the Model Y and Model 3 throughout 2023.
Crucially, Tesla shipped fewer cars than it did in the first quarter of 2023, meaning this was the first year-over-year drop in sales in three years.
Production was also down year-over-year, which Tesla attributed to switching to making the new Model 3, as well as the other disruptions.
These drops come just two months after Tesla warned that sales growth could be “notably lower” in 2024 as it comes off a successful 2023 fueled by price cuts.
Bloomberg News reported last month that Tesla curtailed output at its Shanghai factory as a result of slower sales growth in the country.
Tesla tried to pull a few tricks at the end of the quarter to boost sales, as it usually does.
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation.
Remember in the last edition of TechCrunch Mobility, when I wrote that the wheels were starting to come off the Fisker bus?
Deal of the weekIt ain’t easy being an executive at an EV startup these days.
Amid all of the EV startup bankruptcies and other bleak goings-on, there was a bit of positive news.
It seems that Tesla is turning to FSD as another financial lever to pull as profits on automotive sales shrink.
Tesla is about to start giving every customer in the U.S. a one-month trial of its $12,000 driver-assistance system, which it calls Full Self-Driving Beta, provided they have a car with the compatible hardware.
The company is also reportedly mandating, at CEO Elon Musk’s request, that prospective buyers are given a demo of the software before they purchase a new Tesla.
The full-court press to promote FSD Beta software, an upgraded version of the Autopilot system that comes standard in all Tesla vehicles, is happening at an interesting moment for the company.
It’s the end of the first quarter of 2024, and Tesla usually pulls out all the stops — including having executives help deliver cars to customers — to meet or beat its sales goals.
The decision to temporarily increase access to the FSD Beta software comes as Tesla has been rolling out a new “V12” version of the software that ditches the previous code in favor of a system that runs entirely on neural networks.
One Bay Area startup called Amber thinks it can help them navigate that minefield, starting with Tesla owners.
When owners file a claim, Amber works with qualified repair shops to find the right parts and fix what’s wrong, and will transport the vehicle.
AmberCare is the latest addition to a growing economy built around used EVs.
One group is anyone who is looking to buy a used EV but is scared away by the thought of expensive, time-consuming repairs.
There are other unexpected things to consider in the process of repairing an EV that Pak thinks AmberCare can help with, like transportation.
Ford was the first to start offering the so-called North American Charging Standard (NACS) adapters last month for free.
Most automakers have announced that future EVs will incorporate Tesla’s charging tech into future vehicles.
Rivian’s next-generation vehicles, which it just revealed earlier this month, will also include the Tesla charging port.
Making Tesla’s Supercharger network accessible to owners means they now have 15,000 new fast chargers where they can plug in.
Rivian has also been building out its own network of fast-charging stations, which it calls the Rivian Adventure Network.
The great EV boom is fading a bit, but that’s not a concern if you take a long-enough view.
Sure, Tesla expects slower growth for its car sales this year, and there are some indications that other companies are trimming their electric car plans, but there’s also reason to be optimistic.
If you take a look at some upcoming EVs, you may notice that the don’t look precisely like the current, bestselling gas-powered cars out there.
I reckon that that is for the best — when you swap power sources, you can shake up the rest of a vehicles design, right?
So two cheers for Rivian’s R3 and what Telo is cooking up, because their plans have me hype.
The organization also secured more than $90 million from other donors to support its research efforts.
This is when disagreements started between Musk and other co-founders of Tesla, OpenAI wrote in the blog post, which includes five email exchanges between Musk and OpenAI executives.
“As we discussed a for-profit structure in order to further the mission, Elon wanted us to merge with Tesla or he wanted full control.
Elon left OpenAI, saying there needed to be a relevant competitor to Google/DeepMind and that he was going to do it himself.
As Ilya told Elon: ‘As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open.
