Tesla plans to show off its new robotaxi product to the world on Oct. 10 at the Warner Bros. movie studios campus in Burbank, California, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing “people familiar with the matter.” The event was originally scheduled for Aug. 8 but was postponed by Elon Musk for unknown reasons, leaving many to speculate about how far along the mysterious product actually is.
Musk first announced the robotaxi event in August shortly after Reuters reported in April that Tesla was scrapping plans to build a long-awaited low-cost electric vehicle, a story Musk initially denied, but subsequent reports seemed to confirm its accuracy.
On the same day in April, Musk announced that he would be unveiling a robot taxi in the near future, a tactic often used by the Tesla CEO to deflect attention from bad news. Fans of the billionaire tech mogul were thrilled but were understandably disappointed when Musk decided to postpone the event until October, citing that Tesla “needs more time to build a prototype to demonstrate its functionality,” according to Bloomberg.
Musk has repeatedly promised that fully autonomous vehicles are on the way, but people have been waiting for quite some time for that to happen.
“Performance remains good this year. Regulatory approval is the big unknown,” Musk tweeted. April 2020: About Tesla Robotaxi.
And to some degree, self-driving cars already exist. The problem, of course, is meeting safety standards that minimize adverse events on the road. By now, you’ve probably seen plenty of videos on social media of Teslas, historically referred to as “fully self-driving,” performing some very dangerous maneuvers.
It’s unclear why Tesla would host an event at a movie studio; neither Tesla nor Warner Bros. responded to emailed questions on Friday. Tesla did away with its media relations department several years ago, so frankly I don’t expect to hear from it. But it’s intriguing that Warner Bros. would be willing to work with a politically polarizing figure like Musk.
Before the Trump era, Musk was widely thought of as simply a progressive individualist creating interesting technology, even though the reality was far more complicated. But now in 2024, Musk is an extremely partisan figure who openly supports Trump. That’s not the kind of thing any maker of mainstream products, especially movies and entertainment, wants to associate their company with.
But it looks like we’ll find out in October, unless Musk postpones it again.
