Super weird Robotaxi reveal event

A few days ago Tesla revealed a Robotaxi or Cybercab or god knows how they will call this contraption. And that event and all the details are quite weird and strange that I had a lot of questions.

Firstly there will be no supercharging available and the only possible way to charge it will be a wireless charger. I’ve done a quick research and wireless systems are less effective (more energy loss) and way slower (from 5 to 10 times slower charging speed).

Next thing, it looks like this car will have a way smaller battery and the range will be around 200 miles. But it will work only for a moderate climate. In very hot or very cold conditions range will be much less than 200 because AC or heating will take a good portion of that energy.

Next, we need to add energy consumption for the entertainment system. Nobody watches (or plays) anything when the real car is driving, but now people would like to use the entertainment system while they are riding. And because the battery is smaller now entertainment will take a bigger percentage of it.

So if let's say regular Tesla can charge from 20% to 80% in about 15 minutes, it means that this thing will charge from 75 to 150 minutes. Probably a bit less because the battery is smaller. But even if it will change in one hour, it is not a good thing. Basically, it will drive 2 hours and then it will charge for 1 hour. It is very ineffective from a business point of view.

Why did I write 2 hours? Very simple! From my understanding, 200 miles is the full range, from 100% charge to 0%. Obviously, normally that car will charge until 80% or 90% and will need charging at 10%-15%. Add power consumption from climate control and entertainment and it is clear that it could be even less than 2 hours.

The next thing is the price. This thing costs $ 30,000 and can drive around 2 hours, take 2 passengers and that’s it. Or $ 35,000 for the rear wheel Model 3 that can take 5 people and drive for close to 4 hours. It has frunk and trunk. And you can change it way faster. And lastly, according to Elon, it can also drive itself the same way as this contraption.

So on one side is a car with a relatively high price, low range, and slow charging that you can buy around 2027 in a very optimistic scenario. And that car cannot drive between cities and will be just a pure city car.

On the other side is a car you can buy today that can do all the same things but it has a way longer range, can take more people and you can take it on long trips without waiting half of your trip for it to charge.

Lastly, there is simply no way to charge this cyber taxi anywhere now. All that infrastructure needs to be built first, while all supercharges are available now. It will take a lot of time and a lot of money. Moreover, that infrastructure will be more expensive than superchargers.

Also, I would like to mention that it will be almost impossible to get this thing on the street because it will require tons of permits, and probably it will need separate approval in each state and each country. They tried to release CyberTruck without mirrors and failed. But Rototax is way more drastic.

And there is another quite funny topic. From day 1 Elon is selling people the idea that soon your car can drive you and while you are working/sleeping, your car will make you money. When I first time heard this I immediately started to think about all the caveats of that idea.

For example, somebody takes a knife and cuts a bad word on the back of the passenger seat. If your car had like 20 passengers today, how you will figure out which one did it? And it may happened not today but yesterday or the day before. You just didn’t immediately see it. A single camera will not record it because the passenger will be covered by the passenger’s (or driver's) seat. Especially during dark conditions.

But even if you put more cameras you will need to keep videos for a week or so. Where will you store it? It will require a lot of storage. How much time will it take for you to watch days of videos to catch that bad person who did it? And after you identify that person, you need somehow to know this person's name, so you need to contact Tesla. Then you need to contact a lawyer to get compensation. All of that takes a lot of time and money. And nothing of that is ready so far and it will need a lot of time to set up.

But let’s go back to promises. Elon from day one promised that all their cars would be self-drive and then during this event somebody shouted “What about Hardware 3?” and he responded “Let’s not talk nuances” which most likely means “no”. So people were buying a lot of cars with the false promise that these cars would be able to self-drive and some cars had been out there for around 12 years or more and they still not able to self-drive. And now it looks like they will never be able to do it.

I believe that one day our cars safely will drive us home. But I know that it will not happen in 2026 or 2027. It is a very long process that will take at least 5 years. But it could easily take up to 50 years.

And who will buy Robotaxi? Regular people probably will not buy it because this product simply is not interesting for the average person. It makes sense for taxi companies that can buy thousands of them to get economy of scale and provide a taxi service for regular people.

And if the Robotaxi was at least a somewhat plausible prototype the Robovan was purely unrealistic and it was just fake. It's just garbage that is supposed to fill the void and nothing more.

And as a result, it is understandable why shares of Tesla dropped after that presentation. Instead of doing what people need right now, Tesla is doing something that will start to work in tens of years from now on. It is fine to do it but not at the expense of current needs. But Telsa doing it exactly at the expense of what they need to sell right now. Understandably investors are not happy about it because Elon bet the whole company on it.

In conclusion, as I said this event was very strange and weird with products that are not interesting for regular people and with unrealistic deadlines. And some products were just fake. I hope it does not mean the end of Tesla.