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Tesla CEO Elon Musk, known for his passion for self-driving vehicles, on Friday announced the date when his company will unveil its “robotaxi”, CNN reported.
The 52-year-old billionaire shared the update on X, formerly Twitter, revealing that Tesla — the company that designs, manufactures and sells electric vehicles — will unveil one of its most important products, the robotaxi, on August 8.
Musk did not give much detail and simply wrote on his social media platform: “Tesla Robotaxi unveil on 8/8.”
The tech tycoon has previously hinted at the development of autonomous cars.
He had said that Tesla cars equipped with Full Self-Driving Capability will gradually improve at driving through software updates.
Musk also repeatedly mentioned that these cars could eventually function as fully autonomous taxis, potentially earning money for their owners by providing taxi rides.
The Full Self-Driving capability is available for purchase on the Tesla Model 3, for an additional $12,000, or on a subscription basis for up to $199 a month, depending on how the car was originally equipped.
In small gray type, Tesla’s on-line description points out, “The currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous,” meaning that it is not, in fact, capable of fully self-driving today.
Musk said the system will, one day, make Tesla cars incredibly valuable.
“You can think of every car we sell or produce that has full autonomy capability as something that in the future may be worth five times what it is today,” he said in the company’s earnings call for the third quarter last year.
Experts who have tested the system indicate that the system is still far from autonomous driving without human intervention.
Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, and Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors Company, are collaborating on autonomous ride-sharing services.
However, the companies have either recalled their cars or halted production after a series of accidents that have resulted in human injury or vehicle damage.
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