Tesla’s Cybercab left investors cold: “I’m a shareholder and quite disappointed”

Tesla plans to start manufacturing driverless taxis as early as 2026. The company’s CEO Elon Musk presented the Cybercab, i.e. an automatic taxi, in Los Angeles, California, the night before Friday.

The car has wing doors that open upwards. It has no steering wheel or pedals at all. According to Musk, the price of the car in the United States will be less than 30,000 dollars, or about 27,000 euros.

According to Musk, the Cybercab only needs cameras and artificial intelligence to steer. Charging is also handled by induction, and no cord is needed.

Tesla’s the plans are to run a network of self-driving taxis that work with Tesla’s mobile application. Owners of automatic Teslas could connect their car to the service when they are not using the car themselves.

According to the investors interviewed by Reuters, the plans still seemed rather vague, for example in terms of the schedule. Operating driverless taxis requires permits from the authorities, and the technology chosen by Tesla is considered challenging in this regard.

“Everything looks great, but we didn’t hear much about the timetables. I am a shareholder and quite disappointed. The market would have needed a more precise schedule”, the securities trader Dennis Dick of Triple D Trading told Reuters.

Also competitors, such as Alphabet with its Waymola, are developing driverless taxis. Developing an automatic taxi that really works and is safe enough for the authorities has proven to be difficult.

According to Musk, the FSD technology used by the company will be sufficiently ready within the next year.

According to Reuters, Tesla is moving more and more towards robot cars and other robotics, as the competition in the market for standard electric cars has intensified.

Sales of regular Teslas may have even declined, even though the company has lowered the prices of several models.