Elon Musk sets August 8th as the unveiling date for Tesla Robotaxi

According to an X post by Elon Musk, Tesla will officially unveil its long-promised Robotaxi on August 8th. This revelation came on the same day reports emerged that the company had canceled its plans to build a more affordably priced electric vehicle, said to be in the range of $25,000.

Musk allegedly told employees that instead of focusing on mass-market EVs, the efforts would be better put into developing an autonomous car that would make other vehicles obsolete.

The concept of a Tesla Robotaxi has been teased by Musk for some time now. He has gone so far as to suggest that Tesla owners could earn revenue by deploying their autonomous vehicles to ferry passengers, dubbing it "The Tesla Network" in his Master Plan Part Deux.

According to Musk, users would have the ability to add their vehicles to this shared fleet with a simple tap on the Tesla phone app, allowing the car to generate income while its owner is at work or on vacation.

However, it’s important to note that Musk has a track record of making ambitious plans that he sometimes struggles to fulfill.

For instance, in 2019, he confidently proclaimed that Tesla would have over a million cars on the road equipped with Full Self-Driving hardware within a year, with the FSD feature being so reliable that drivers could "go to sleep." Despite significant advancements in autopilot and FSD technology, Tesla has yet to achieve Musk's lofty projections.

Consequently, there have been hundreds of crashes involving Tesla vehicles using FSD and Autopilot and dozens of deaths. The company is facing numerous wrongful death lawsuits. The US government is investigating the company’s claims around self-driving, and a major recall was announced late last year.

As anticipation for the Robotaxi launch builds up, one of the questions in most people’s minds will be just how successful will this new project be.