Tesla delays planned opening of Robotaxi

Tesla Inc. is delaying the robotaxi’s planned October launch to allow teams working on the project more time to build additional prototypes, according to people familiar with the decision.

The roughly two-month delay was communicated internally, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information has not been publicly announced. The design team was told this week to rework certain elements of the car, one of the people said.

CEO Elon Musk set the initial date of August 8th for the event months ago, and optimism about the spectacle contributed to an 11-day winning streak that added more than $257 billion to Tesla’s market capitalization. Shares closed down 8.4% on Thursday, the biggest drop since January.

Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

Shares of would-be taxi rivals Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. rose on the news. Uber shares rose 6.1% on Thursday. Lyft shares jumped 4.6%.

The idea of ​​creating an autonomous taxi service has been floating around Tesla for years, dating back at least to when Musk wrote a second “main plan”to the company in 2016. The CEO has prioritized the project in recent months over working on an electric vehicle that is cheaper than Tesla’s most affordable car, the Model 3 sedan.

Musk has been talking about Tesla’s work in autonomous vehicle technology for more than a decade and has convinced customers to pay thousands of dollars for a set of features the company markets as Full Self-Driving, or FSD. The name is an inappropriate name — FSD requires constant oversight and does not make Teslas autonomous — but Musk and top engineers have been increasingly optimistic about FSD in recent months as sales of the company’s vehicles have slowed.

Tesla delivered 6.6% fewer cars in the first half of the year, despite the company adding a new model – the Cybertruck – for your schedule. The automaker also produced 14% fewer vehicles in the second quarter than a year earlier to help reduce inventory growth.