Hey everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast.
This is a show where we discuss the critical crossroads, the
Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neurolink.
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Thank you so much. So what if Tesla's long promised
self driving taxis actually hit the streets this year?
How would their new humanoid robot fit into the company's
future plans? And with Tesla's revenue slowing
down a little bit, could these projections be the key to
turning things around? On Wednesday, the company
confirmed it intends to roll out its robotaxi business and begin
pilot production of its Optimus robot in 2025, marking a major
step in its expansion beyond just electric vehicles.
Elon Musk described autonomous ride hailing as essential to the
company's future. Speaking at an earnings call, he
said Tesla is confident it will launch an unsupervised Full Self
Driving FSD service in Austin, TX as early as June.
Now, unlike Tesla's current driver assist system, this
version would not require human oversight, making it one of the
most ambitious attempts at a fully autonomous ride hailing
ServiceNow. Musk also predicted that Tesla's
robotaxi operations would expand to California later this year,
with additional markets to follow.
However, fully autonomous services face significant
regulatory hurdles, especially in states like California where
existing laws require very strict testing and approval
processes. Despite this, Musk's timeline
suggests Tesla is pushing ahead aggressively with its self
driving ambitions. Now.
Tesla's Robotaxi is an autonomous ride hailing vehicle
designed to operate without a human driver.
Unlike conventional cars, it will lack a steering wheel and
pedals, making it fully reliant on Tesla's FSD system.
The company plans to integrate the Robotaxi into its broader
self driving ecosystem, offering a service where Tesla owners can
deploy their vehicles for ride sharing when not in use.
The concept aligns with Elon's long standing vision of turning
Tesla vehicles into revenue generating assets, allowing
owners of Teslas to earn money by lending their cars to the
fleet. Now the Robotaxi will be based
on Tesla's upcoming Cyber Cab, a purpose built autonomous vehicle
set to enter mass production in 2026.
Initial development and deployment will begin in Austin,
TX, with expansions to California and other markets
following soon after. And Tesla stated that its FSD
system is improving towards exceeding human safety levels.
Though the company has faced regulatory scrutiny over its
self driving claims. And it's successful.
Though the Robotaxi network could significantly disrupt the
ride hailing industry by offering low cost transportation
without the expense of paying humans.
Now, beyond autonomous taxis, Tesla's reformation of its
commitment to introducing more affordable EVs.
The company stated that the production of these lower cost
models would begin in the first half of 2025.
Rather than using an entirely new manufacturing process, these
vehicles will incorporate elements from both Tesla's
existing platforms and next generation designs.
They will also be built on the same assembly lines as the
company's current models, allowing Tesla to scale
production way more efficiently than building its new line now.
Tesla's earning report painted kind of a mixed picture of the
company's financial health. The company generated $25.7
billion in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023, a 2% increase
from the previous year but short of analysts expectations of 27.1
billion. Meanwhile, net income fell
sharply, dropping 71% to 2.3 billion.
The decline in profitability reflects several challenges,
including price cuts on Tesla vehicles and rising competition
in the EV market. But despite the financial
slowdown, Tesla's stock price rose more than 4% in after hours
trading following the earnings announcements.
Some investors appear more focused on Tesla's long term
projects, such as its Full Self Driving Business and robotics
division, than on its recent financial struggles.
Analysts have noted that the company's ability to
commercialize autonomous technology and robotics could be
a deciding factor in its future success.
Now, Tesla's Optimist Humanoid Robot, another project set for
development in 2025, is designed to handle tasks inside Tesla
factories before being introduced to broader
applications. Musk said the company plans to
produce about a several 1000 units next year, marking a major
step toward automation and Tesla's manufacturing
operations. Long term goal is for optimist
to perform a wide range of tasks, with Musk even suggesting
that it could eventually play the piano and get this thread a
needle. I can't even do that and I'm a
human. It's really hard.
If you could do that, leave me a comment in the the podcast
platform that you're on right now.
Tell me that you can thread a needle.
I know it's I can do it, but it takes a little time.
Now. The introduction of Optimist
raises questions about the role of humanoid robots in industrial
settings, though. Tesla is betting that automation
will increase efficiency and reduce labor costs, but the
effectiveness of robots and complex tasks remains uncertain.
If successful, Optimus could expand beyond Tesla's own
factories and be marketed to other industries, potentially
transforming how repetitive or physically demanding jobs are
performed. Now the company's push into
robotics is part of all of Elon and Tesla's broader vision of AI
driven automation. Tesla's been developing AI
software not just for self driving cars, but also for
robots that can function in dynamic environments.
Critics have raised concerns about whether Tesla can deliver
on his ambitious promises given the complexity of EI driven
robotics. But as we all know, Elon has
given us pretty much everything that he's said in the past.
His promises, they've been pretty fulfilled and maybe
slower than what he said in the beginning, but nonetheless
they're coming to fruition. And while Tesla continues to
develop self driving and robotics, its current FSD system
remains under scrutiny. Company describes a software as
an evolving system. It's, I mean, it's software.
I'm a software developer. I understand this.
You have an alpha, a really pre alpha.
You keep building up and that's why people scrutinize it because
they don't understand software development.
It's evolving and eventually it'll improve towards ultimately
exceeding human levels of safety.
However, Tesla's also faced regulatory investigations and
lawsuits over past claims about the capabilities of full self
driving. Elon does like to embellish a
little bit. Let's let's be honest here, if
we are a fan of Elon or not, he likes to embellish.
And you know, he usually backs it up.
So now the National Hwy. Traffic Safety Administration
and HTSA has launched multiple probes into crashes involving
Tesla vehicles operating under FSD in autopilot modes.
And despite these challenges, Musk has remained steadfast in
his belief that Tesla's FSD technology will define the
company's future. He's repeatedly argued that
autonomy will transform Tesla's financial model during his
vehicles into assets instead of just cars.
Think about this for a second. When you're at work, say if you
work in an office or even if you work at home and you have, let's
just say a normal 8 hour shift, you're not going to drive your
car for those eight hours. Why not send it out into the
fleet, earn some money from your vehicle while you're stuck in
your office? You know, for emergencies,
that's not the best thing. But if you're in an office and,
or wherever you are, if you're going to take a plane ride for a
week, you know, if you're going to be out of town for a week,
then of course use your car so you can make that money back for
your trip. There's a possibility that you
could make a little bit extra too.
But if the robotaxi service succeeds, it could disrupt Uber,
It could disrupt Lyft. You know, Uber Eats could be a
thing of the past. You know, all the, the gig
workers out there, instead of going to buy groceries and drive
around for Instacart, you might just have to go like have your
Tesla go to the store and somebody from Instacart or
somebody from the store packs up the Tesla sends it off to the
house. Oh, that's, that's going to be
the best grocery delivery from a Tesla.
It just, you just go out there, you open up the car with your
phone with a, you know, Instacart app, open up the car
with that and then you get your groceries out of it.
There you go totally, totally self driving and totally hands
off, no human contact. That would be pretty great.
Now Tesla's approach to full self driving, though it differs
from competitors like Waymo and Cruise, which rely on high
definition maps and Lidar sensors for navigation.
Tesla has a vision based system. They use cameras and neural
networks to interpret real world driving conditions.
They want to make it as human like as possible.
It's a loud Tesla to develop a scalable solution, but it's also
resulted in challenges related to accuracy and safety.
But once they figure it out I think it'll be completely fine.
It's much better than most of the other.
Basically the other ones are lane assist at this point that's
pretty much all they are and full self driving basically
drives your car for you. It's going to be critical in the
next few months though for Tesla with a roll out of the robotaxi.
It's going to be very limited roll out of the robotaxi, by the
way. But if you're in Austin, TX, go
go, go get the Tesla app and get a taxi.
That'll be really cool. Now, optimist robot production,
thousands on the line, thousands of robots coming off the line.
I should say it's going to be a change for for Tesla.
They're not just an automaker anymore and they haven't been
for a long time. Elon even stated something in
the long lines of if you think Tesla's an auto, make her,
you're mistaken and you're Dumber.
So something along those lines. I can't remember the exact
quote, but he was pretty blunt about it.
But their expansion into robotics, robot taxis is a major
shift in business for Tesla. Because remember in the
beginning they were a green little electric car startup?
That's why we all fell in love with Tesla with Tesla, right?
Nice little, nice little car. Nice little electric car goes
fast, zippy, and is a little more green than buying gas.
And now look at it. It's grown tremendously.
Let me know in the comments what you think.
I want to hear your opinions on this.
And if these projects succeed, though, they could position
Tesla at the forefront of all autonomous transportation and
industrial automation as well. Everybody on the line right now
is doing industrial work, like piece work or tasks that be that
are repeated. Those people could get replaced
by autonomous Tesla robots. So just be warned, people that
are out there that are working industrial jobs that are
repeatable. I know that big corporations,
and this is just AI and of course Tesla robots are using
AI, but AI has replaced lower to mid level software developers
and a bunch of top tech companies.
Recently, all those developers got fired or moved around.
So if you're on the line and you know Tesla robots are coming for
your job, just be ready to pivot to something else.
Get something started, get a side hustle.
Then from that side hustle, maybe make that into your job.
I don't know. Anyway, that's pretty much it
for now, everybody. Tesla can overcome this
technological leap, though. The financial hurdles and
regulatory hurdles are just that.
They're just hurdles. The regulatory red tape and
Tesla, they're going to roll them out and it's going to be an
amazing future. Hey, thank you so much for
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