Tesla Reveals Robotaxi App and Names the Robotaxi the CyberCab

Tesla has invested billions of dollars over the years toward vehicle autonomy. The mission continues as Elon Musk and Tesla now prepare to unveil their ride-hailing product, Robotaxi this August. Or, as Musk called it on Tuesday, Tesla CyberCab.

Early Days

Five years ago, during Tesla's Autonomy Investor Day in April 2019, Elon Musk said he felt "very confident predicting autonomous robotaxis for Tesla in the following year [2020]". At the time, Musk added a bolder claim, predicting that Tesla wouldn't even make cars with steering wheels or pedals by 2022. While timeliness may not be Musk's strong suit, he has a track record for getting things done that others were unwilling to try or thought were impossible. Musk later admitted he can be overly optimistic and said "sometimes I am not on time, but I get it done." 

Now, 5 years later, we have the robotaxi unveiling scheduled for August 8th. After the release of FSD v12, it's clear that we're much closer to autonomy than we were in 2019, although FSD v12 is still a far cry from full autonomy.

While Tesla still has the robotaxi unveiling scheduled for August, Tesla announced yesterday that it'd be prioritizing a simpler "next-gen" model that could be released by early 2025.

Latest Updates

On the conference call, Musk added that Tesla now has over 300 million miles driven with FSD v12 since it was launched just last month. He added that it's becoming "very clear that the vision-based approach with end-to-end neural networks is the right solution for scalable autonomy".

Tesla said it has been investing in the hardware and software ecosystems necessary to achieve vehicle autonomy and a ride-hailing service. The company is confident that it can establish a scalable and profitable autonomous driving business by employing a vision-only architecture.

think of it [Tesla] as combination of Airbnb and Uber meaning that there will be some number of cars that Tesla owns itself and operates

Tesla = Uber + AirBnb

Later on, Elon Musk unveiled that the new service will operate and result in a mix between Uber and Airbnb where the Tesla driver decides if and when he wants his Tesla to be used and by whom. Tesla stated:

"We believe the Tesla software experience is best-in-class across all our products, and plan to seamlessly layer ride-hailing into the Tesla App."

Tesla's CEO clarified that the owners will be able to add or remove their car from the fleet "whenever they want" adding that it will be up to them to decide if they want to only let the car be used "by friends and family or only by five-star users or by anyone at any time". The flexible program will, just like Airbnb, allow the owners to take the car out of the market when they want.

The upcoming ride-hailing service will enable users to easily request a Tesla vehicle, control the car's temperature, monitor its real-time location, and adjust the audio system. The only question is when.

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May 4, 2024

By Cláudio Afonso

Tesla cars are the cheapest to maintain and repair according to a new study by Consumer Reports. Elon Musk commented on the survey on X emphasising that Tesla is "the lowest car to maintain".

The study, which includes data from thousands of car owners in the US, was recently published and shows that Teslas averaged only $580 in maintenance and repair costs over the first five years of ownership. From years six through ten, the costs increased to $3,455, which brings the total to $4,035 for the first ten years of ownership — the lowest of any vehicle tested. It's worth noting that the average length of car ownership in the U.S. is about 8 years. 

Buick and Toyota fall right below Tesla (both at $4,900) with Lincoln and Ford closing the top 5 with $5,040 and $5,400 respectively for maintenance and repair costs in a 10-year ownership.

German premium automakers BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz are among the 5 most expensive on the list with 10-year costs reaching $9,500, $9,890 and $10,525, respectively. The trio is only surpassed by the luxury German automaker Porsche with an average cost of $14,090 and Land Rover closes the list at $19,250. 

Car Maintenance

Vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICE) require additional maintenance, not only oil changes, but drive belts, transmission oil changes, coolant flushes, and more. Not only that, but ICE cars have more moving parts that decrease the reliability of the vehicle and can cause additional repairs such as transmission issues, clogged fuel filters or injectors, faulty spark plugs and the list goes on and on.

Since electric vehicles use regenerative braking to slow the vehicle down, brake pads also last much longer, sometimes lasting over 100k miles. This reduces wear on the brake pads, and rotors and even reduces brake dust on your wheels.

"EVs are cheaper to maintain, look after, and certainly to service," says Matt Cleevely, from Cleevely Motors to Wired magazine adding that EVs "have half as many moving parts and require no regular oil changes".

In Tesla's case, the automaker suggests Model 3 owners replace the cabin air filter and HEPA filter every three years, check brake fluid every two years, and clean and lubricate the brake calipers every year or 12,500 miles, in areas where the roads are salted during the winter.

Gas Savings

These maintenance savings are only a small part of the reason why electric vehicles are cheaper to use for daily driving. Another large portion of savings comes from fuel costs. Tesla often promotes their vehicles' gas savings on their website. For example, the Model Y has an estimated gas savings of $6,000 in the U.S. over the first five years of ownership alone. The savings may be even greater in other parts of the world where gas may be more expensive. After taking those savings into account, the world's best-selling vehicle in 2023 starts at $29,490 after gas savings and the U.S. federal tax credit — and that's before you include maintenance cost and time savings.

May 3, 2024

By Not a Tesla App Staff

It looks like Tesla may soon be replacing its archaic voice commands with something much more useful — a voice assistant.

Greentheonly, who often takes deep dives into Tesla software by decompiling the firmware and looking for changes, has now found the early integration of a voice assistant.

Voice Assistant Already Available in China

Tesla has already replaced its voice commands in China with a voice assistant that can not only control certain aspects of the vehicle using more natural language but can also answer common knowledge questions such as the current weather, stock quotes and more (video below).

Available Only on AMD?

Correction: Tesla's voice assistant in China is only available on vehicles with AMD processors (MCU 3), and unfortunately not on older Intel-based (MCU 2) cars. If Tesla is utilizing the same core technologies in its upcoming voice assistant for other regions, we may see the same limitation.

Intel vehicles in China still use the voice command system we're familiar with today.

Tesla Creating Own Assistant

According to Green's findings, it looks like Tesla may be rolling its own solution instead of integrating something like Amazon Alexa like Rivian has. Tesla created their own solution in China by using some of their own technology and several existing software solutions. However, some of them are only available in China so they don't scale to support additional regions.

Grōk

The first thought that comes to mind is Tesla leaning on AI efforts by Grōk and xAI, which could help it support common knowledge questions and search the web for answers. However, that only gets Tesla partly there, as Alexa and Google Assistant already support a large ecosystem, one that may not be available if Tesla creates their own voice assistant. With Tesla's solution, a driver may be limited to what devices they can control through the voice assistant, at least initially. Either way, just a more natural way to activate certain vehicle solutions will be an improvement over what's available today. The ability to ask the assistant common questions will be the icing on top.

Wake Word

According to Green, the source code hinted at the voice assistant using a wake word, which would replace the need to press the scroll wheel on the steering wheel. Tesla has begun to use the left scroll wheel button for additional things lately such as wiper controls and a multi-function mode, so this may fit in with their plan.

It's fun to speculate what the wake word would be or whether Tesla would add the ability to create your own. It could be something as simple as 'Hey, Tesla', 'Grok', or something more humorous as Tesla has a knack for. Unfortunately, there weren't any hints on what the actual wake word would be, but being able to set a destination, play a specific song or ask the assistant for the weather will be a much-needed improvement.

Supported Models

It's not clear which models Tesla would support a voice assistant, but with the release of software v12 with update 2024.14.3, Tesla is starting to leave more features out of older Intel-based vehicles. While a voice assistant may not necessarily be computationally heavy, it may depend on Tesla's implementation and whether voice commands are transcribed on device or carried over the internet for transcription.

Voice Model

In the software, there are references to Microsoft's text-to-speech technology and specifically to a voice named "Jenny Neutral."

The "Jenny Neutral" voice seems like an acceptable voice, bringing a natural-sounding voice to Tesla's voice assistant, although it doesn't differ much from what you find on other assistants. You can view an example of Microsoft's "Jenny Neutral" voice in the video below.

Tesla has been more mindful lately about adding information for unreleased features to its software to help prevent leaks, so by the time something like this is found by Green, it usually doesn't take long before it becomes available, although this could also make for an exciting Christmas present.