Elon Musk’s “We, Robot” event revealed not only the Robotaxi, but also huge leaps forward with Optimus and a surprise minivan Robotaxi too. But just how much of it will come to fruition?

The Robotaxi

Look I’ll be honest, when it comes to all things Space X, I have full faith in what they set out to do… However when it comes to Tesla, after waiting 6 years for my Full Self Driving (and it’s still not available on my car), lets just say my faith in the Tesla team is running a little thin.

So to see the Robotaxi event opening with actual, working, driverless Robotaxi’s roaming the lot was rather exciting. Unfortunately there were only 50 vehicles available to test, so only a lucky few got to try one, others were allowed to test the fully autonomous software running on the Model Y instead.

The idea with the Robotaxi is this: You or I buy one (or more), and then add your new car to the Tesla App “fleet”, and then if someone books a ride, perhaps your Robotaxi goes off and takes the job, earning you money. All you need to do is keep the car charged and clean. Like a giant tamogotchi.

Now I have a few issues with this, and it’s not because I’m anti-change, anti-future, or against full self driving. I’m very the opposite. It’s with the concept of the car itself… Well, two parts of the concept actually…

No Steering Wheel

Yes, it’s very cool to have no steering wheel, I love the idea. However in practicality, the idea is massively flawed. Not just now, but in 100 years time, it will still be a bad idea. Let me explain.

So, the idea of no wheel makes the interior look sleek, I get that. But there are times when you need a wheel. What happens if you need to swerve? FSD regularly makes mistakes, and I’m confident that won’t end by Robotaxi launch date, so what do I do if I need to hit the brakes, or swerve to avoid something the car hasn’t seen, or what if (most likely) I need to intervene because the car can’t read the road markings properly and it’s about to drive in to a ditch?

Do I just have to sit there in silent panic as I watch myself hurtle towards a tree?

Where will my Robotaxi park? And how will that happen? There was no talk of this at the stage, but I think it’s an important question. What happens if I own 5 robotaxi’s at home and I want them to park in my front garden, rather than in the default location the car would choose? How to I get the car to make that tight park, or that awkward “possibly not legal” park? What happens if my Robotaxi is blocking my wife’s car? How do I move it quickly? Currently I just jump in to my car, shimmy it along, and get out. Am I now expected to use an app to try to make nuanced moves when parking? Surely not? Although it seems that would be the only way.

Ideally there should be a manual override steering wheel that can “hide” itself away when in full self driving mode, but still be available for a human to access should they need to. This isn’t a “next few years” idea, this is how all cars should be, forever. Removing the wheel, as fun as it sounds, is just not viable ever.

Also, I REALLY want a brake pedal to be there, forever. 

Wireless Charging Only

Elon often makes claims that are, lets say, a little exaggerated so lets hope and pray this is one of those times.

With only a 200km range, any long road trip is going to make the Robotaxi useless if wireless charging is the only option. Tesla, recently acquired a wireless charging company that claims to be able to achieve up to 93% efficiency over a 10cm air gap, which is wildly impressive. However, the speed is slow, and if that’s the only option available, supercharging on those long trips becomes a thing of the past.

If I have a flock robotaxi’s at home (as Elon mentioned he would like us to have), how am I charging them? Am I really expected to lay out these charging plates all over my drive way to let the robotaxi back up on to, or worse yet, am I going to have to get a really long extension cord if my robotaxi decides to park on the street? It kind of feels that Elon thinks everyone has a 5 car garage and a nice long drive way for these sort of dream situations, when in reality, at this price point, the average owner is likely to be renting in an high rise apartment with underground parking with no cell service. OH YEAH! If the robotaxi goes somewhere with no cell service, does it stop driving? Because at that point I would REALLY like a steering wheel.

Anyway, I’ll stop complaining, other than those two gripes, the robotaxi looks excellent. I really approve of the two seats, and giant trunk. Despite what some folks over on X say, the data shows most taxi rides are single or dual passenger only, so this makes a lot of sense. Although I suspect we will see people trying to see just how many folks they can cram in to a vehicle once they hit the streets.

Telsa are really banking on the full self driving AI becoming a large revenue stream to support the rest of the business, so let’s hope these issues are ironed out before launch. You’ve only got one chance to make a good impression with these sort of things.

Kane Vato – Editor in Chief

Optimus, the autonomous assistant droid for work and home is great, it really is. The agility progression that Tesla have managed to add to the robot over the last 12 months is truly astonishing. However it’s important to bear in mind that there are other brands of robots out there that can perform similarly, the Figure 01 is making great strides at a similar rate as Optimus, and the new Boston Dynamics robot is so quick is borderline terrifying. However, where Optimus has the upper hand is the full self driving AI that we spoke about earlier. Yes, the exact same “brain” powering all the vehicles also controls the navigation and more in Optimus too.

So now we have an interesting issue arise. As previously mentioned, Tesla’s Full Self Driving is currently “ok”, but often times it can go very, very wrong and that’s why it’s critical that you, the driver, supervise the car, and are always ready to step in should the car make a critical error. I’m interested to see how we will be able to stop Optimus in it’s tracks if it makes a mistake whist carrying out tasks. As far as I can see there’s no “emergency stop” button on Optimus should it decide to put your dog in the washing machine by accident.

Tesla really have a lot riding on the finalisation of the Full Self Driving AI engine, because it’s not only got to be flawless for the car, but also it needs to be equally as flawless for the robot moving around your kids and pets at home, interacting with you (I presume) via voice commands, and picking up your personal effects around the home.

The speed of Optimus development, and the consistent mechanical achievements of Tesla instil me with a lot of faith that Optimus will be a hit, possibly beyond the robotaxi. The full self driving car needs to be able to navigate any street or scenario on Earth, but Optimus only really needs to be able to work (initially) around the home or office. A far smaller “map” is far easier to teach, so I have high hopes that it will perform excellently. Early videos showing the rate at which it can learn new tasks, purely from visual input, are amazing, and the prospect of having a robot about the home is every 80’s kids dream.

Sign me up.