Zhitong Finance App learned that global leaders in the field of electric vehicles and autonomous driving$Tesla (TSLA.US)$A high-profile Robotaxi (driverless electric taxi) press conference was originally scheduled to be held on August 8 in the field of autonomous driving, but Musk recently postponed the launch to October 10.

Although Tesla has yet to officially release any Robotaxi-related products, it can be said that Tesla's sense of crisis in the Robotaxi field is already full. With Waymo, Zoox,$Uber Technologies (UBER.US)$, $Lyft Inc (LYFT.US)$ as well$BYD Company Limited (002594.SZ)$Other giants are entering or stepping up efforts to deploy driverless taxis in the innovative technology field, and Tesla is already feeling strong competitive pressure. Among them, Waymo autonomous taxis have already provided Robotaxi services to the public, and recently expanded the scope of Robotaxi business in the US.

Tesla has been talking about the concept of driverless taxis since 2016, and the event itself should clearly show the specific car shape of Tesla Robotaxi and the new software and hardware infrastructure supporting Robotaxi. According to reports, Musk has ordered major design changes to the upcoming Robotaxi, which is one of the important reasons for the postponement of the press conference.

The RoboTaxi press conference may also clarify some conflicting reports about the significance of Tesla's latest FSD system. Some users raved about the latest FSD feature. Tesla said it now uses FSD (supervision) to drive 1.6 billion miles, completely surpassing competitors in terms of collected data.

Meanwhile, Truist Securities, a well-known investment agency on Wall Street, recently reported testing an updated version of Tesla's autonomous driving software. The agency's analyst William Stein said the new version is impressive, but it doesn't address some important autonomy issues. “The shortcomings we have observed make it hard to imagine how amazing Tesla will perform at the RoboTaxi event in October,” Stein emphasized.

“For example, when the car in front of us only made a partial right turn, the Model Y accelerated through an intersection. To avoid an accident, I must intervene quickly. Interventions were also needed when a police officer gestured for us to stop the car by the side to allow the funeral procession to pass. The third intervention was less necessary; it was more of a matter of convenience. Finally, in one section of our route, the freeway curves narrow, and there is a solid white line between the lanes, indicating that changing lanes is prohibited. Despite this, the Model Y changed lanes twice in this situation.” Stein wrote in a research report on Tesla.

Currently, the driverless taxi, or Robotaxi concept, is not unique to Tesla. $Alphabet-A (GOOGL.US)$ Waymo, which is a subsidiary of$Amazon (AMZN.US)$Zoox, which is a subsidiary of$Baidu (BIDU.US)$Apollo, which is a subsidiary of $General Motors (GM.US)$ Technology giants such as Cruise and Motional are all speeding up along the path of “driverless cars” at different speeds.

According to information, just this week, Waymo, which has already officially launched a number of Robotaxis, expanded its Robotaxi coverage in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Notably, since receiving approval from the Commission in August 2023, Waymo has operated a commercial driverless taxi service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week throughout San Francisco. Google, on the other hand, chose to invest in Waymo for a multi-year period of 5 billion dollars. “This new round of financing is in line with recent annual investment levels and will allow Waymo to continue building the world's leading driverless technology company.” Ruth Borat, CIO of Google's parent company Alphabet, emphasized during a recent results call.

Meanwhile, the Zoox self-driving ride-hailing service is about to welcome its first public passengers in Las Vegas. For its part, Zoox's main partner is the AI chip hegemon$NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$. “There has never been a robot company like this in the world,” Nvidia CEO Wong In-hoon said about the development of the Zoox Robotaxi business. Zoox uses Nvidia's high-performance GPUs and Nvidia ecosystem's software-accelerated tools to run various simulations to test its autonomous driving system in a virtual environment before deploying Robotaxi in the real world.

Negative news also exists in the robotaxi sector. Motional has cancelled the autonomous driving test program in Las Vegas and a food delivery project in collaboration with Uber Eats in Santa Monica, California. CEO Carl Ignema commented: “Large-scale driverless deployments won't happen overnight. Driverless cars will enter the market when technology matures, and just as importantly, the business case for driverless deployment will become clear.” Of course, by traditional car industry giants$Ford Motor (F.US)$Argo AI, which is supported by Volkswagen, has closed its doors.

Online car-hailing giants $Uber Technologies (UBER.US)$ versus $Lyft Inc (LYFT.US)$ It is a staunch member of a group seeking to expand the fleet of driverless taxis. “Uber has a unique technical advantage and can provide tremendous value to driverless car players looking to deploy its technology on a large scale,” Uber CEO Dara Kosrosasi said during the company's recent performance call. “Although the operation of a ride-hailing network may seem simple, it is based on our technology that masks a great deal of complexity,” he said. Another ride-hailing giant Lyft made similar positive comments on its second-quarter results call about the huge opportunities driverless cars could present to the company.

One of the biggest development projects in the online car-hailing industry this year may be Uber and Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD announcing that they are working together to establish a global Robotaxi fleet. As part of the partnership, Uber plans to add more than 0.1 million BYD cars over the next few years. According to media reports, the expansion is expected to be centered around Europe and then move to Latin America, the Middle East, and North America.

“Sister Mu Tou” can be called an avid Tesla fan, highlighting Robotaxi's huge revenue potential

Cathie Wood (Cathie Wood), who can be called “Tesla's number one fan” and a “staunch supporter of Musk,” believes that Tesla's market value is expected to exceed 8 trillion dollars in the future. Ark Investment Management Company, founded and led by “Cathie Wood”, recently updated its target price for Tesla. Ark expects Tesla's stock price to reach 2,600 US dollars by 2029. Ark's main logic for bullish Tesla is that it is expected that by 2029, nearly 90% of Tesla's market value and profits will be due to the RoboTaxi taxi business built on incredibly powerful AI supercomputing.

Ark's confidence in Tesla's ability to launch the RoboTaxi network within the next five years has increased dramatically. The agency believes that in the future, every Tesla vehicle will become an artificial intelligence-driven cash flow generating machine, and Tesla's business model is expected to shift from one-time car sales to a recurring sales base.

Tesla previously stated that the official launch of the Robotaxi (Robotaxi) was postponed from August 8 to October 10. Musk said at the July Tesla Performance Conference that this will enable the company to add some new content and plan the Robotaxi development blueprint more comprehensively when the product is launched. Musk said in his opening remarks that the importance of autonomous driving cannot be underestimated, and that RoboTaxi, built on the latest upgraded FSD fully automated driving technology, will become Tesla's core revenue generator.

As Masca expressed on social media X (previously Twitter) at the time, he thought Robotaxi and “Optimus Prime humanoid robots” based on fully automated driving would be Tesla's future. He posted on the X platform in July that once Tesla completely solves the autonomous driving problem and mass produces the Optimus robot (Optimus) on a large scale, anyone who still has a short position in Tesla will be “eliminated,” even Bill Gates. Musk previously even called out what seemed crazy market capitalization expectations at Tesla's shareholders' meeting. Musk predicted that with the joint support of autonomous driving technology and Optimus Prime robots, Tesla's market value would exceed 30 trillion dollars.

edit/emily