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On Tuesday, CEO Elon Musk said the number of Tesla Robotaxis in Austin, Texas, “should roughly double” in December, according to Reuters, prompting a slew of heated questions.
In 2019, Musk famously predicted that no fewer than 1 million autonomous Tesla Robotaxis would be traversing American roads by 2020.
As of this spring, Tesla had failed to launch a single Robotaxi, which, by the automaker’s own definition, is a “fully automated” vehicle.
When Musk said in May that Tesla’s long-awaited Robotaxis would debut in Austin in June, the public was skeptical. At the time, the electric vehicle manufacturer was beset in a sustained, global sales slump, and the launch was potentially pivotal for the brand.
Consequently, people were surprised when the rollout occurred June 22 — but USA Today‘s reporting the following day revealed that the cars involved weren’t autonomous.
Within a month, reports of dangerous mishaps and ongoing remote human intervention during the Robotaxis’ first month circulated. Several crashes were also reported.
As Reuters noted, Musk’s claim about doubling the fleet was undercut by the fact that it was “not immediately clear how many Robotaxis Tesla operates.” High estimates placed the number of Robotaxis in Austin at 30, a relatively low number considering Tesla‘s size.
Against a backdrop of never-resolved concerns about Robotaxis’ true level of safety and questionable autonomy, one commenter on the social platform X responded to Musk’s tweet with pointed questions.
“Will you remove the safety monitor next month too? Abundance of caution is good, pending interventions per mile ofc but it seems like safety monitors are the biggest bottleneck for expansion,” they replied.
Broadly, rapidly waning consumer trust in Musk’s statements and Tesla’s reliability could have an adverse effect on EV adoption, and commenters on Reddit’s r/SelfDrivingCars exemplified this problem when discussing his latest claim.
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“This man is the most prolific liar in the history of mankind. You can’t point to anyone else who lies as much as him, whether it’s FSD, Optimus, boring company, spacex. His list of blatant lies range in the thousands,” one replied.
Although one Tesla driver praised their FSD experiences, another maintained that Tesla had yet to actually deploy a single Robotaxi that met their definition of the word.
“Elon redefined self driving and Robotaxi. Tesla has zero Robotaxis in Austin,” they asserted.
“Still exactly 0 unsupervised robotaxis in all of the US,” another agreed. “And you know that the implications of this fact are damning for Tesla because Elon absolutely would use driverless robotaxis to shut up the haters if he could.”
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