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We do expect actually to start fully autonomous unsupervised FSD in Texas and California next year, and that's obviously that's with the Model three in Model Y, and then we expect to be in production with the cyber cap, which is really highly optimized for autonomous transport in probably Well, I tend to be a little optimist with the time frames, but in twenty twenty six, so yeah, before twenty twenty seven, let me put it that way.
Well, Elon Musk is now the richest person on the planet.
More than half the satellites in space are owned and controlled by one man.
Well, he's a legitimate super genius.
I mean legitimate.
He says. He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will be different.
He'll vote Republican.
There is a reason the US government is so reliant on him.
Alon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Anything he does, he's fascinating people. Welcome to Elon, Inc, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. It's Friday, October eleventh. I'm your host, David Papadopolis. We are here with the special episode because, as you just heard elon unveiled last night the Cyber Cab, I am joined by Craig Trudell, our Global Autos czar in London. Craig, welcome, Thanks for having me. Now, Craig, I slept through this thing. You
got up stupid or earlier on. I mean, the Bloomberg system tells me that you badged in at two twenty two am. God bless you. How many cups of coffee are you on at this point? And have there been any drugs involved to keep you going?
No?
No ketamine for me. Just a couple of americanos will do. And I'm hanging in.
Okay, okay, excellent. So in addition to getting the breakdown from Craig, we're also going to hear from our old pals Max and Dana, who have sent us audio clips with their impressions of how this went last night. But Craig, let's start with just give us a sense of for all the folks like me out there who slept through this thing. What are the top lines here?
Well, I think that clip that we just played off the top was instructive in that you know, the folks in the room definitely there was a lot of oohing and out eyeing and cheering at what Elon had to say, and you know, I give give him credit. You know, the cyber cab that he showed, it's a slick looking,
you know, two seater. They showed a Robovan or reboven depending on how Elon was deciding to pronounce it, that you know, also also looked cool, you know, But in terms of when these are actually going to be ready, how many they're going to make, any sort of technical indications of real progress here and sort of hard and fast details, there was nothing we got through his presentation, and honestly, my reaction to it was was was that it that's all. That's all we.
Got, Craig. How long did the presentation go on for, I.
Think from beginning to end it was roughly forty minutes, But that included a little intro by the head of design for Tesla, and so it wasn't entirely Elon, and there were some interruptions of you know, people getting excited about what he had to say. So you know, this also included you know, sort of demos of the car and the van driving around the Warner Brothers lot, which you know, as Max said, earlier this week. We've seen
demos now year after year after year. You know, I feel like we've seen fewer of them more recently because the rest of the world has sort of woken up to just how difficult it's going to be to put these things on the road. But Elon is really sticking to it, and not only that, sort of betting the company on it.
Right, he said, I believe that he's aspiration and this wouldn't be now for the Robotaxi itself, this would be for their other for the current fleet and with its autonomous capabilities, he's hoping to have them greenlit to to operate autonomously. I believe in the cities in California and Texas.
Is that right? Yeah?
And we heard that in the clip off the top. I mean, I think for him to refer to I guess I also just want to kind of parse what he's saying there. He's saying unsupervised full self driving. I would think that full self driving would indicate not needing to be supervised. But I guess that's where we are after you know, Tesla having sold these features as you know, fully self driving when they are anything but four years now.
So you know.
I think that just speaks to this idea of when he when he gives these timelines, you have to take them with a great big grain of salt.
But the top lines are apparently perhaps under thirty thousand dollars this thing shall cost in production by twenty twenty six, and maybe no steering wheel, no pedals on this thing. Let's listen for a second to Dana Dana Hall's take on this.
When I heard the phrase individual mass transit, I kind of flipped out. The event was interesting. We saw the Robojaxi, we saw a robo van, we saw optimists serving drinks. But as like an event, I don't know. I underwhelmed. I think the expectations for this were really high. I'm sure it was a super fun party for people that were there, but I just just didn't do it for me.
There.
It was light on the details, light on the business model, timeframe is still ways off.
Optimism of serving drinks crag. That seems kind of cool, all right, but so Dana says, light on details. Wall Street very much agrees with that. At one bank, the analysts, I think it was Jeffries, they said Musk's Robotaxi was quote toothless. I'm not exactly sure we wanted this thing to have teeth, but I get the point. Craig Dana is correct. Expectations were high, and there was a lot riding on this because the stock had soared in the run up to this event, maybe more than fifty percent.
I believe now almost seventy percent.
Seventy percent. It's down a good chunk. We are recording, to be clear, before the market opens on Wall Street. But in pre market trading, it's good. It's down a good amount.
Is it not.
Yeah, it was down as much as as almost seven percent before the before the market open, so I think, you know, you refer to the Jeffreys report that those particular analysts cover Uber and Lyft, and I thought it was very interesting that you saw analysts sort of come out of the woodwork who cover those companies and say, all right, guys, you know, sort of all clear here.
It speaks to the idea that, you know, not only are our folks who cover Tesla for a living sort of walking away from this event with without you know, much in the way of of sort of high hopes, but analysts who cover the ride hailing companies also you know, we're really closely watching this because they were concerned that, you know, after Musk talking about this year after year after year, maybe now is finally going to be the time that that he's ready to launch a service that
would compete with the uber and lifts of the world. And you know, I don't think that anybody sort of you know, had a takeaway from last night that you know, what those companies need to worry about this.
I guess the glass half full take on this would be, well, this is the initial market reaction. They're not in love with it with all the details and what they saw, but heck, after a seventy percent pop in the stock, if you give back seven percent, that ain't too bad. We shall see how it trades the rest of the day and in coming days and see if these concerns that we're seeing this morning keep building or if they're just a temporary blip. Let's also listen to our man Max Chafkin and get his take.
I just watched the cyber Cab unveiling. Now I got a caveat this. I was in the back of a taxi watching it on a small screen, coming home from a event I'd had maybe a glass and a half of wine, so you know, caveats there. But I have to say it was not I don't think it was the best case scenario for Elon. We talked about it being on a sound stage. It looked like a sound stage. There were like what looked like sort of plywood cutouts of vehicles to make it look like a real street.
It looked like a staged thing, and the entire event was sort of about looking forward and you know, sketching out this glorious future that Elon has talked about many times and how much cheaper it's going to be when you have robots, and how many more parking spaces they'll be, and how much more green space they'll be. And it really was the kind of standard futurist stuff that we have been hearing from autonomous vehicle pioneers for fifteen years,
and there was very little in specifics. Now, I will say the cyber cab itself is pretty striking. They had I think twenty of them there, so it's definitely a long way from as market, and you know, it looks cool, it looks futuristic. I just am not sure it's a future that is anywhere near for us. And and and you know, I almost almost tempted to say not in our lifetimes.
I have to say I do agree with Max and with you Craig, that, uh, this thing looks pretty badass, right for a guy who's got a current fleet that looks a little stale and stayed and old. This thing pops visually.
I think it does. And and I just would again, you know, not not to be this sort of Debbie downer, but you know, Elon is fond of saying prototypes are easy. Production is hard, and I think that that's a really apt thing here that like, you know, he he built a very eat prototype here. I think the Robovan prototype is cool. It reminds me a lot of the Crew's origin, which was a bit smaller of a sort of bread
loaf shaped vehicle that debuted years ago. But again, just to sort of go back to sort of throwing a bit of cold water on things here, GM a few months back decided to scrap plans to to you know, make that cruise origin because of federal motor safety standards that that you know, they had petitioned for exemptions to those rules, and for years that petition went you know, unacted upon, and so I just have a strong suspicion that, you know, we're going to end up talking maybe a
year or two from now about Elon taking you know, either one of these vehicles to Nitsa and not being happy about them, just sort of giving their instant blessing for these being actually ready for the road.
Craig, any final thoughts from you, sir before we let you go and crash to sleep.
Yeah.
I think this this event sort of, you know, sums up exactly why Elon is such a polarizing character, because on one hand, you can see in this this is this is the visionary who dares to think it's you know, possibly feasible to you know, shoot off rockets and land them back on bard ships in the ocean. He's gonna, you know, do it all again and completely revolutionize you know,
road transport. I think what we've just learned over the last decade or so, and and this gets back to, you know, what Max was saying is it may be more difficult to put a safe self driving car on the road than to to land rocket ships back here on Earth after shooting them off into space. And it just speaks to this sort of you know, level of technical challenge and capability that is going to be required for these autonomous vehicles to be acceptable to society.
Very good point, and it reminds me of something somewhat related, which is watching him on stage there after having just seen him on stage with Trump and Butler, Pennsylvania. I will say this, he was much more in his element here right, Like you know, you had to like the slick leather jacket going. He was kind of right. He just seemed cool and confident and and like I said, in his element, whereas I don't think he knew what the hell to do when he was on stage in Butler, Pennsylvania. Craig,
thanks for joining us. Go get some sleep. We'll have you back on again soon.
Thanks guys.
This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Nailmi Shaven and Rayhan Harmanci are our senior editors. The idea for this very show also came from Rayhan Blake Maple's Handles Engineering and Dave Purcell fact checks. Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrikson. The elon Ing theme is written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugira. Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks, as always to our supporter Joel Weber. I'm
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