Tesla CEO Elon Musk has unveiled a new self-driving vehicle called the Robotaxi, declaring at an event in California that “it’s going to be a glorious future.”
The two-seat car, which has no steering wheel or pedals, is expected to be available by 2026 and cost under $30,000, according to Musk.
“As you can see, I just arrived in Robotaxi, the Cybercab,” Musk told an audience after getting out of one of the vehicles at Warner Bros. Studios outside Los Angeles.
“You see a lot of sci-fi movies where the future is dark and dismal, where it’s not a future you want to be in… We want to have a fun, exciting future that if you could look in a crystal ball and see the future, you’d be like, ‘yes, I wish I could be there now.’ That’s what we want,” Musk said.
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The Robotaxis will drive with the help of AI and cameras, while charging will be inductive.
“With autonomy, you get your time back,” Musk said.
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“I think the cost of autonomous transport will be so low that you can think of it like individualized mass transit. The average cost of a bus per mile for a city… is about a dollar a mile, whereas the cost of Cybercab, we think probably over time, the operating cost is probably going to be around $0.20 a mile,” he added.
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Musk said the driverless car experience is Tesla “trying to give you a sense of what cities will be like in the future.”
“And, when you get in, you’ll see, like, it’s really quite a wild experience to just be in a car with no steering wheel, no pedals, no controls. And it feels great,” he said.
Musk also announced a self-driving Robovan during the event, but provided fewer details.
“Now can you imagine going down the streets and you see this coming towards you? That would be sick. So this can carry up to 20 people, and it can also transport goods,” he said.
The timeframe of Robovan’s release was not immediately available.
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