Elon Musk is years behind on his ambition to make Tesla’s cars fully autonomous. He said he’s willing to risk the company’s profit margins for autonomous driving.
Elon Musk said in a conference call that Tesla has the opportunity to sell cars “without profit” and later earn immense sums with the driverless software. But how much can you put on it?, investors ask themselves. Because Musk has been saying for years that the Teslas will soon drive autonomously. Already 2015 the man was sure that it would still be possible to drive autonomously in the summer. However, the brand has not progressed beyond level 2.
Now he wants to sell the cars without making a profit in order to later equip the vehicles with a really full self-driving mode and thus “achieve enormous economic advantages,” he said. The main effect would be a price war for e-vehicles. The company has reduced the price of its best-selling Model Y by 29 percent in just a few months. That has hurt the company’s margins and is worrying investors.
The dream of autonomous driving has captivated the auto industry for years, and Tesla’s Elon Musk has been one of its most vocal advocates. But the company has yet to deliver on its promises of robotic taxis dominating the streets. Even for one Video couldn’t drive the car by itself.
Behind it is the full self-driving system, aka autopilot. Neither one nor the other word really applies. At level 2 you have to constantly monitor the cars and you can’t let go of the steering wheel. Telsa charges a surcharge of 15,000 US dollars for this. This income is to be postponed as the product is not final.
As in so many years, Musk announced that autonomy will be achieved later this year. It will be interesting to see why it doesn’t work again. At the attempt in 2020, the authorities were to blame, which meanwhile because of him misleading advertising want to concern.
How high the profit shifts are to be quantified is to be announced soon.