① The news of the delayed launch of Robotaxi has already been communicated within the company, and the design team was told to redesign some elements of this taxi this week; ② Tesla's competitor Uber's stock price rose 5.3%, and Lyft's stock price increased by 7.9%.
Financial Services, July 12 (Editor: Niu Zhanlin) In the US stock market on Thursday, the share price of electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla once plummeted by more than 8%. The latest decline has narrowed slightly. Due to reports, Tesla delayed the release of the driverless taxi Robotaxi from August to October to give the project team time to make more car prototypes.
People familiar with the matter revealed that the delayed launch of Robotaxi has already been communicated within the company, and the design team was told this week to redesign some elements of this taxi.
Following the news, shares of Tesla's rival Uber rose 5.3%, and Lyft's shares rose as much as 7.9%.
Against the backdrop of the intelligent driving concept becoming a core hot topic and Tesla's second-quarter deliveries being better than expected, Tesla's stock price had been rising for 11 consecutive trading days, increasing the company's market value by nearly 260 billion US dollars, and completely recovering from all the declines since the beginning of the year.
Tesla CEO Musk has been promising shareholders for years to launch the driverless taxi Robotaxi. In 2015, he said Tesla's cars would be “fully autonomous” within three years. In 2016, Musk said that by the end of the following year, Tesla will be able to drive a car off-road without any human intervention.
These empty promises continued until 2019, when Musk said on a conference call with institutional investors that Tesla would own 1 million autonomous taxis in 2020. However, the company has yet to launch driverless taxis, autonomous vehicles, or technology that can turn its cars into “Level 3” autonomous vehicles.
Meanwhile, Baidu's driverless taxi project “Radish Run”, Alphabet's driverless taxi project Waymo, and GM's Cruise are already at the forefront of Tesla.
In April of this year, Musk reiterated his vision for Tesla, which is to develop driverless taxis to make money for car owners and the “Tesla Network.”
“If anyone doesn't believe Tesla will solve the problem of autonomous driving, I don't think they should be investors in this company,” Musk said. The company is due to announce second-quarter results later this month.