When Did Elon and Tesla Know About FSD and Robotaxi Getting Solved?

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June 27, 2023 Elon and Tesla realize that FSD version 12 would be good enough to get off beta.

March 11, 2024 Said FSD Beta 12.3 is such a big release it should be called Version 13.

March 19, 2024 Joonsung Kim, Tesla news coverage, interviewed Korean Tesla engineers working on FSD would reach robotaxi level by June, July 2024.

Elon Musk and the internal team have been driving and testing FSD 12.4 and FSD 12.5.

Speculation

In order to not get trouble with the SEC, Tesla and Elon need to be driving clean with their internal latest version. More internal drivers must be assigned inside Tesla for FSD testing.

How Might Tesla Rollout?

Tesla has about 100,000 cars that were returned from multi-year leases. They can put the software on all of those cars. Tesla can also reduce used car sales.

Tesla should just get the robotaxi network stood up with Tesla owners.

Tesla can adjust how much they get from robotaxi by increasing FSD subscriptions and profit sharing with OEM partners. Tesla does not need to

6 thoughts on “When Did Elon and Tesla Know About FSD and Robotaxi Getting Solved?”

  1. How will the robotaxis recharge? So far, it always takes a human to plug & unplug an EV and to pay for it too. And something/someone has to decide when to recharge, which will be often in an energy sapping urban environment.
    Actually, this is only one of very many problems, not least of which is accident liability and theft or vandalism of the car, maybe even by displaced taxi drivers.
    Another Musk too early promise.

  2. Tesla can roll out Tesla Network now as an app or an extension of X or whatever.

    The Robotaxi riding sharing software infrastructure needs to precede FSD achieving full Robotaxi competence by a good margin.

    The TN app should let a Tesla owner act as a rideshare driver like Uber/Lyft with everything automated as though there was no one in the drivers seat. Tesla owners could earn money if they want but the infrastructure would be in place for Tesla to test the full stack and let the public see it work – within current regulations. Somebody is babysitting in the drivers seat and responsible to disengage if needed.

    Being able to do this is a demonstration that FSD is nearly ready.

    • The real “demonstration” is regulatory approval. It’s not ready until regulators say it is level 4 or 5. As of now, they say it is level 2.

  3. If Tesla believes this, they should be buying up used 3s and Ys in order to increase the robotaxi service launch fleet.

    Prices would go up. The opposite is currently happening.

    Maybe they are waiting to deploy capital closer to service launch? Maybe they don’t think used vehicles will be an important part of the fleet?

    Maybe they will prefer a strategy that uses less capital – pay me $50/day to use my 2020 3 as a taxi rather than buying it for $20k?

    • Why would they want the hassle?

      They can make new ones for their own use plus make money on subscriptions for the already sold ones.

    • Robotaxi will be a platform business. Tesla, like Uber, takes a cut of revenue and the vehicles are owned and maintained by fleet operators. Any other model is too capital intensive to scale quickly enough. Not to mention the organizational complexity of creating support infrastructure in a broad geography (maintenance facilities, staff, etc.)

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