Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk set new targets for artificial intelligence products including self-driving software and using humanoid robots in factories, though he acknowledged he’s been optimistic before.
The electric vehicle maker is in early talks with a major automaker to license its full self-driving technology, Musk added.
The value of Tesla vehicles would rise in perhaps “the single biggest step change in history” once regulators approved self-driving, he said at an earnings briefing. Musk has also said that Tesla robots, in the pilot phase, could become a huge product. He said they could help out on Tesla’s factory floors as soon as next year, although only about 10 have been built to date.
Rising interest rates and competition from new EV makers have forced Tesla to cut vehicle prices to gain market share, hurting margins. But Musk said Tesla will keep pushing to expand sales volume at the cost of profit margins, betting on the long-term value from FSD. “Autonomy will make all of these numbers look silly,” he said.
Tesla’s move to license its technology comes after years of failed promises by many to create software that lets cars drive themselves. The licensing announcement was not surprising, given industry failures, Ark Invest’s Tasha Keeney said on Twitter. “Autonomy is hard, it requires vast amounts of data, and I believe many automakers will fail to achieve it on their own.”
Tesla has completed over 300 million miles in the beta version of FSD, over half of which was in the past quarter, according to an earnings presentation. But Musk was more cautious than usual.
“People have sort of made fun of me and perhaps quite fairly have made fun of me, my predictions about achieving full self-driving have been optimistic in the past,” he said. “I’m the boy who cried FSD, but I think we’ll be better than human by the end of this year,” he said. “I’ve been wrong in the past, I may be wrong this time.”
Tesla began delivery of an electric sports car, the Roadster, in 2008. With sales of about 2,500 vehicles, it was the first serial production all-electric car to use lithium-ion battery cells. Tesla began delivery of its four-door Model S sedan in 2012. A cross-over, the Model X was launched in 2015. A mass-market sedan, the Model 3, was released in 2017. The Model 3 is the all-time bestselling plug-in electric car worldwide, and in June 2021 it became the first electric car to sell 1 million units globally. fifth vehicle, the Model Y crossover, was launched in 2020. The Cybertruck, an all-electric pickup truck, was unveiled in 2019. Under Musk, Tesla has also constructed multiple lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle factories, named Gigafactories.
Elon Reeve Musk is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO, and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO, and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CTO of Twitter; founder of the Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; and president of the philanthropic Musk Foundation. Musk is the wealthiest person in the world with an estimated net worth, as of July 12, 2023, of around US$239 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and $248.8 billion according to Forbes’s Real Time Billionaires list, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.
(With inputs from agencies)
