Musk unveils Tesla's electric robotaxi, says he’s ‘optimistic’ on production time frame

Elon Musk unveiled Tesla's long-awaited robotaxi at a Hollywood studio on Thursday. The automated electric car would offer "fully autonomous, unsupervised" driving, Musk promised, but he was less certain of production timelines and meeting regulatory requirements.

Elon Musk on Thursday unveiled what he said was a robotaxi capable of self-driving, predicting it would be available by 2027 -- about a decade after he first promised an autonomous vehicle.

The Tesla CEO said the fully electric car -- which has no steering wheel or pedals -- would be priced under $30,000, would be charged wirelessly with inductive technology and would be "10 to 20 times safer" than human-driven cars.

"You can think of the car in an autonomous world as being like just a little lounge," he told a crowd at the Warner Brothers Studio lot near Los Angeles.

"You're just sitting in a comfortable little lounge, and you can do whatever you want while you're in this comfortable little lounge, and when you get out, you will be at your destination."

Few details were given about the vehicle, whose gullwing doors are reminiscent of the Delorean made famous by the "Back to the Future" films, but Musk said Tesla already had 50 of them.

He said the company was expecting to begin "fully autonomous, unsupervised" driving in Texas and California next year with existing models, and then move on to production of what he called the "cybercab".

But it also showcased a mass passenger vehicle that Musk called "The Robovan."


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