American electric car pioneer Tesla is adding momentum to the race for self-driving taxis. On Friday evening, Elon Musk’s car brand presented its robotaxi. Tesla is late to the game, after all other providers have been testing American roads for years. However, the big breakthrough has not yet occurred. Is Tesla now igniting the decisive development turbo?
Enter the pick-up and destination location in the mobile phone app, wait a moment – and the robotaxi will arrive. This has been happening in San Francisco for a long time. Self-driving cars are already driving around the Silicon Valley metropolis – mostly operated by technology or car companies. Waymo belongs to Google, Cruise belongs to General Motors and Amazon is behind Zoox. There are already experiments in Chinese cities: Google’s Chinese rival Baidu and the start-up Pony.ai are testing their robot taxis in Guangzhou, among others. What all previous experiments have in common, however, is that their robot taxis are still in the development phase and are not yet ready for the market. At Cruise, the tests even had to be stopped after accidents involving passers-by. Because of these difficulties, Tesla’s expectations are particularly high. Krone+ analyzes the current status of autonomous robot taxis, how the technology works – and how Tesla could fail.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
