Tesla is postponing its planned robotaxi unveiling to October to allow teams working on the project more time to build additional prototypes, according to people familiar with the decision.
The roughly two-month delay has been communicated internally, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information had not been publicly announced. The design team was told this week to rework certain elements of the car, one of the people said.
Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk set the initial August 8 date for the event months ago, and optimism about the spectacle has contributed to an 11-day streak of gains that added more than US$257 billion to Tesla’s market capitalisation. The stock closed 8.4 per cent lower on Thursday, its largest drop since January.
Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
Shares of would-be taxi rivals Uber Technologies and Lyft both surged on the news. Uber’s stock rose 6.1 per cent on Thursday. Lyft shares jumped 4.6 per cent.
The idea of creating an autonomous taxi service has been kicking around Tesla for years, dating at least as far back as when Musk wrote a second “master plan” for the company in 2016. The CEO has prioritised the project in recent months over work on an electric vehicle cheaper than Tesla’s most affordable car, the Model 3 sedan.
Musk has talked up Tesla’s work on autonomous-vehicle technology for over a decade and convinced customers to pay thousands of dollars for a suite of features the company markets as Full Self-Driving, or FSD. The name is a misnomer – FSD requires constant supervision and does not render Teslas autonomous – but Musk and top engineers have been increasingly bullish about FSD in recent months as the company’s vehicle sales have slowed.
Tesla delivered 6.6 per cent fewer cars in the first half of the year, despite the company adding a new model – the Cybertruck – to its line-up. The carmaker also produced 14 per cent fewer vehicles in the second quarter than it did a year earlier to help curtail swelling inventory.
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