Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk on Monday confirmed that its robotaxi unveiling event has been delayed to deploy some design changes to the vehicle.
What Happened: “Requested what I think is an important design change to the front, and extra time allows us to show off a few other things,” Musk said about delaying the robotaxi unveiling event initially scheduled for Aug. 8. The CEO, however, did not provide fresh dates for the event.
Musk’s confirmation comes on the heels of a media report from last week that said that the company has delayed its robotaxi unveiling event, initially scheduled for Aug. 8, by two months to October. The postponement of dates is to allow teams working on the project to build more prototypes, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Neither Tesla nor Musk had confirmed the report until now.
Why It Matters: While other players like Waymo, Cruise, and Zoox have all revealed driverless robotaxi designs with no steering wheels, Tesla would be the first with sufficient manufacturing capability to produce the design at scale, according to Ark Invest’s Brett Winton. Unlike many investors who were disappointed at the delay, Winton is positive about the delay, which he deems is about the company taking the time to get it right.
Winton thinks that Tesla likely delayed the event to ensure that the new vehicle design is close to the one that the company will eventually produce at scale, while also aligning it with its progress on the full self-driving (FSD) driver assistance software. Tesla is currently ramping up the capabilities of FSD toward vehicle autonomy. The two-month delay might be to align FSD milestones with the robotaxi unveiling event, he opined.
“In our view, its robotaxi service could be one of the most profound business transformations in history, moving Tesla from the one-time sale of vehicles to a recurring revenue model involving platform fees for every commercial mile,” Winton wrote in Ark’s weekly newsletter published earlier this week.
Price Action: Tesla shares closed up 1.8% at $252.64 on Monday and rose 0.9% after hours. The stock is up 1.7% year-to-date, according to data from Benzinga Pro.
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