At its latest annual meeting, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has ‘softened’ his claim of having a driverless taxi fleet on the roads by 2020.
At Tesla’s Autonomy Day event in April, Musk announced that by next year Tesla would have ‘over a million robotaxis on the road.’
The Los Angeles Times reports that speaking to shareholders at the company’s annual meeting, Musk hedged his earlier statement, saying Teslas would be ‘capable’ of such driverless operation. ‘We will have a million cars capable of self-driving’ next year, he said. ‘We’ll still need regulatory approval.’
‘We could practice a rideshare fleet with people and then, um, that would be good for figuring out things for the robotaxi fleet in the future. So that might make sense. Sort of a supervised robot taxi,’ said Musk.
According to the Los Angeles Times executives in the driverless-car industry had been highly sceptical of Musk’s original announcement, saying such robotaxi fleets won’t be practical for many years.
