Adam Jonas, the Managing Director for Global Auto and Shared Mobility with Morgan Stanley, released a note earlier this month about Tesla’s future Robotaxi service and some possible expectations for its upcoming Robotaxi event on Thursday.
Let’s take a look at what he has to say about Tesla.
Robotaxi Event
Jonas predicts that Tesla’s event will serve as a showcase for the Cybercab, showing off its capabilities and design features. Attendees will be shown and given rides in the Tesla Robotaxi at the event, which will provide a set of baseline expectations for Tesla’s future service.
Dual Approach
However, he predicts Tesla will roll out Robotaxi in a two-pronged approach. In his eyes, Tesla will offer a fully autonomous app-based robotaxi/Cybercab service, but it will also offer a second option, a “supervised” autonomous/FSD-based rideshare service. He believes that the second item here—the rideshare service—is the biggest one that will impact investors. This human-powered fleet will essentially be an Uber competitor, which raked in 10 billion dollars in revenue last quarter.
Targeting
Jonas breaks down Tesla’s approach to rolling out Robotaxi and Unsupervised FSD in the future. As we previously discussed in an article on Tesla’s future, Tesla will likely target urban and metro areas for its initial rollout of Cybercab. Other areas may receive service from the supervised rideshare service.
Jonas estimates the FSD take rate will approach 30% this year with the now lower prices. Tesla may choose to keep the FSD price low to continue the high adoption of the service. This will help Tesla build out its human-based network faster until it can achieve a fully autonomous fleet that will work anywhere.
Morgan Stanley also believes Tesla will offer more favorable rates than Uber and its competitors, leaving more money in the driver’s pocket while Tesla grows its rideshare community.
Uber
Uber will be a direct competitor to Tesla’s in-house rideshare service, and Teslas likely account for approximately 5-9% of all Uber trips today. Tesla will have to ensure that its new owners who intend to do ridesharing will switch to Tesla’s service rather than continue with Uber’s well-established taxi service.
We’ll see how the future rollout of Tesla’s Unsupervised FSD and Robotaxi goes on 10/10, which is just a few days away. Be sure to check out our article on what to expect at Tesla’s event.
For the first time in quite a while, Tesla has increased the price of one of its vehicle offerings. The Model S Long Range and the Model S Plaid have both received a hefty price increase. However, not all is bad - as Tesla also added a new benefit for buyers.
Price Increase
The price increase for the Model S is $5,000 - currently only in the United States. This price increase will likely impact other markets, including Canada, in the coming days.
The Model S Long Range now starts at $79,990, while the Model S Plaid now starts at $94,990. The Model S and Model X now have the same starting price. Interestingly, that’s also the same pricing point for the Cybertruck AWD and Cyberbeast Trimotor non-Foundation Series.
The vehicle configuration does not appear to have changed, so the new pricing is simply an increase rather than the addition or removal of features. Tesla previously cut the price of the Model S and Model X by 15% in 2023, so this could simply be an adjustment to ensure that the vehicle pricing stays in line with inflation and other factors.
Free Lifetime Supercharging
For those on the fence about ordering a Model S, Tesla has brought back Free Lifetime Supercharging when you order a new Model S on or after December 13, 2024. As always, Free Lifetime Supercharging is restricted to the buyer’s Tesla account and to that specific vehicle. It cannot be transferred to another vehicle or another owner after ownership transfer. It’s worth noting, that it also doesn’t exclude the owner from receiving Supercharger idle fees or congestion fees. There is currently no end date for this promotion.
There are currently no changes to the Model X, neither a price increase nor the addition of Lifetime Superchargering. However, when Tesla makes changes to one of their premium vehicles, it usually affects the other one as well. So be on the lookout for potential changes to the Model X offering in the coming days.
We’ve seen Tesla value Lifetime Supercharging at $5,000, so this falls in line with the price increase we’re seeing. It’s possible that Tesla will begin to bring back Lifetime Supercharging as a perk for buying into their more premium Model S and Model X cars, or this could be another temporary promotion to get buyers who are on the fence to go ahead and make their purchase while this promotion lasts.
Tesla recently showed off a demo of Optimus, its humanoid robot, walking around in moderately challenging terrain—not on a flat surface but on dirt and slopes. These things can be difficult for a humanoid robot, especially during the training cycle.
Most interestingly, Milan Kovac, VP of Engineering for Optimus, clarified what it takes to get Optimus to this stage. Let’s break down what he said.
Optimus is Blind
Optimus is getting seriously good at walking now - it can keep its balance over uneven ground - even while walking blind. Tesla is currently using just the sensors, all powered by a neural net running on the embedded computer.
Essentially, Tesla is building Optimus from the ground up, relying on as much additional data as possible while it trains vision. This is similar to how they train FSD on vehicles, using LiDAR rigs to validate the vision system’s accuracy. While Optimus doesn’t have LiDAR, it relies on all those other sensors on board, many of which will likely become simplified as vision takes over as the primary sensor.
Today, Optimus is walking blind, but it’s able to react almost instantly to changes in the terrain underneath it, even if it falls or slips.
What’s Next?
Next up, Tesla AI will be adding vision to Optimus - helping complete the neural net. Remember, Optimus runs on the same overall AI stack as FSD - in fact, Optimus uses an FSD computer and an offshoot of the FSD stack for vision-based tasks.
Milan mentions they’re planning on adding vision to help the robot plan ahead and improve its walking gait. While the zombie shuffle is iconic and a little bit amusing, getting humanoid robots to walk like humans is actually difficult.
There’s plenty more, too - including better responsiveness to velocity and direction commands and learning to fall and stand back up. Falling while protecting yourself to minimize damage is something natural to humans - but not exactly natural to something like a robot. Training it to do so is essential in keeping the robot, the environment around it, and the people it is interacting with safe.
We’re excited to see what’s coming with Optimus next because it is already getting started in some fashion in Tesla’s factories.
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