Hey everybody, welcome. Back to the Elon Musk Podcast. This is a show where we discuss the critical. Crossroads that shape. SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company and Neurolink. I'm your host, Will Walden. Tesla's upcoming cyber cab just moved from concept to physical form, and the clues are sitting in plain sight at the company's
Palo Alto headquarters. A newly spotted vehicle draped in a tight black cover appears to match the low profile shape of Tesla's driverless robotaxi prototype, which Elon Musk teased earlier this year. Has Tesla actually begun building the first functional cyber cabs now? The shape of the cover vehicle lines up with Musk's April reveal, where he briefly flashed a shadowed render of the Robo Taxi during the company's Robo Taxi Day announcement.
And the design doesn't resemble any existing Tesla model. It's smaller and flatter than a Model 3, and it lacks the visible roof line of the Model Y Size, angle, and placement of the roof bump seen under the cover match the earlier concept image. A Tesla parked vehicle outside its 15 O one page Mill Rd. office, which is a location closely tied to its Autopilot and Full Self Driving teams. This isn't the kind of site where prototype hardware usually
gets left unattainted, though. Tesla tends to keep early vehicles out of public view unless the goal is to send a message or to test public reaction. Parking this vehicle so openly right after Musk confirmed and August 8th unveiling for the Cyber Cab looks intentional. Now Tesla hasn't commented on the vehicle, but the location and timing both point toward this being a pre production
prototype of the robotaxi. That matters because it means Tesla could already be testing cybercap hardware internally and up until now, that robotaxi was a promise which was hyped. It was announced, but nobody knew when they were actually going to start developing this thing or building this thing. It's the first real evidence of Tesla physically building
something tied to this project. Now, the low profile and tight footprint of the prototype suggests that the Cyber Cab isn't based on a modified Model 3. Or why Tesla appears to be following through on his claim. The robotaxi will use an all new platform.
That platform will reportedly be shared with Tesla's next generation compact vehicle, which is expected to be built at both Giga Texas and Giga Mexico. The $25,000 Tesla maybe, and we'll see now the cyber cab is designed as a driver of this vehicle from the start so Tesla can strip away components like the steering wheel and pedals and future iterations. That reduces interior complexity and cost, which Musk had previously said. We'll bring the right price
below bus fare. But to reach that goal, Tesla still needs to prove that FSD, the full self driving system, can safely handle real world conditions without human
supervision. Musk said the robo taxi would look futuristic and the covered prototype supports that claim the short hood, high beltline and bubble like cabin match vehicle built primarily for autonomy, not driving in the shape of maximizes internal volume while minimizing surface area, which this is an efficient design choice for an urban transport pod of the timing of this sighting add some pressure. Tesla is set to unveil some more vehicles in the near future.
They just released a $37,000 or basically a $40,000 model and a 35,000 ish dollar model. And those were OK. They didn't really do much. Stock went down after the announcement, but it went back up the next day. You know, Tesla could be preparing to show a working vehicle with early hardware, which would signal that production is closer than presumably, you know, assumed by others out there. Now, this is competitive. Waymo and Cruise are the enemies here.
Both companies have logged millions of miles with driverless cars, but the vehicles rely on modified passenger cars and rely heavily on Lidar and HD mapping. Tesla is betting on a pure vision based system, no lidar or radar, which requires stronger neural Nets and a more advanced AI model to match the safety level of the competitors. And if Tesla pulls this off, the company could skip the incremental rollout that other robotaxi firms rely on.
Instead of geofence launches, Tesla could try for a more global release once regulators approve. Of course, that would reshape the right handling market. Bye bye Uber drivers. Bye bye Lyft drivers. You can have a robotaxi and pay, pay about the same amount of money and get a, a robot to do the driving for you. Let's get in, do your thing, get out. It's like Disney. Disney has something similar to this. You can have a basically a robo
cab. They have set routes, but there's no driver and you can get in them and you can go someplace, you know, but this is real world, you know, this is Disney. They have pre approved routes, they have geofencing, they only go certain amount of speed and they know exactly what's going to be on the roadways. Now. This would reshape the whole ride hailing market and push legacy players to rethink their
autonomous strategies. Somebody like Uber is going to be working with other companies, ride sharing companies out there who have vehicles. They're going to push all the drivers that are in driver positions right now. They're going to push them out of the business and they're going to have robo taxis, not the Elon and Tesla robotaxi, but they will have autonomous vehicles that will be driving
people around. They're already doing it with Waymo. If you want a Waymo, get an Uber. You know, hop on an Uber and get it. But there goes the the economy for ride sharing for drivers. Look man, I'm going to be honest with you. In the hard times, I drive Uber or I drove Uber in the hard times and it pays OK. If you drive all day, you can make decent amount of money, but you got to drive sometimes 12 hours stay in order to make a good amount of money. And even then you got to really
rely on tips from people. And some people are just cheap. So you never know how much money you're going to make that day, but you can bring in, you know, if you do it right, couple $1000 a week and that alone is enough money for rent, child care, whatever, if you need the money. But that's all going away. I don't think it's going to go away right away though.
This stuff takes time, right? Cyber cab isn't going to just hit the ground running and regulators are going to take their sweet time because what happens if there's an accident? Who's liable? What happens? One of these things gets pulled over by a police officer. What happens then? Does the person just kind of like get out and who do you ticket for these kind of things like say what if these one of these robotaxi or cyber cabs
goes down one way Rd. the wrong way, a cop pulls up behind him, pulls him over and there's no driver. So who do you ticket? You must ticket Tesla. There's got to be so there's got to be regulations around this. And before they actually roll these things out. So it's going to be a while. People these, you know, rideshare apps are still going to be around for a while. Taxis are going to be around for a while. Limousines are going to be around for a while.
People dislike people, you know, they, they want people around sometimes. Sometimes you don't. And that's when you hail a driverless cab like a cyber cab. But the presence of this prototype is pretty big and Elon and Tesla are very secretive about their hardware. So having this outside where people can see Rick see it clear as day is not just a render anymore.
It's a real thing. They're they appear to be building the hardware, need to support the robotaxi, the cyber cab, All that stuff is going to be happening very soon. So if you're in one of those areas like Austin, grab 1, you know, grab a, grab a Tesla, an automated Tesla and scoot around, see what it feels like and, you know, get to your destination. But you don't even need to talk to somebody. You can pick your own music too, which is great. All right, so that's about it
for today's episode, everybody. But I want to ask you a question. One quick question before we go. This is important. If you've been here for a while, I'm going to ask you for a favor. Please take a second out of your day and do a five star review for the show. That's all I'm asking you. It'll literally take you 30 seconds after the show's done. Like just do it right now. It's all done.
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I've been doing it for about 6 years. I could not do without you. So I really do appreciate you and I really do appreciate all the comments that I've been getting recently because it really matters. I'd like to talk to people about Elon. I want to talk to him about Tesla. I want to talk to him about SpaceX and there are some comments that just recently, I'm going to read a few of them. I read some yesterday. I might read the same ones
today. And you know, some of the some of the older comments on older videos or on older podcasts, Miss Moon said Banger, banger. Somebody said conspiracy theories really. Lol. That was about, I don't know which episode that was about. Let's see. Former open AI and anthropic staff accuse Elon Musk about something. So I was just reporting the news. They thought their conspiracy theories OK. And somebody said, and you know, you can, you can think whatever
you want. I'd like to hear your opinions. Somebody said, dude, why the 180 turn on Elon? I've never turned on Elon. You know, Elon has done some silly stuff in his life and you got to call the guy out sometimes bogged in thanks for that comment. They said they originally subscribed to this to learn of Elon's achievements. I'm I'm not here to defend him. You're too biased. I'm not really biased. I'll tell you how it is man. You got a really take things for
what they are. If you see something, say something, right? And this one is open, AI funded $40 billion, quite close to SpaceX. And then it says Cody said hi about that episode. Hey, Cody, how's it going? And then on this episode which is Elon caught deleting this after a huge blowback. So let me get this straight from Nathan says SpaceX just pull off an engineering marvel re rescuing 2 astronauts for the
space station. Instead of covering that you're ranting about Elon supposed love for dictators. The mental gymnastics are breathtaking. Maybe step outside your propaganda bubble for a second. His achievements, including with Doge or Undeniable if they do not fit your narrative, I don't have a narrative. That's all I'm saying. Nathan, I appreciate your comments. I like to read both. I like to read positive comments. I like to read comments that disagree with me.
I'm OK with that. Oh man, this Nathan had a spat here. But there are a few of them that I'm like, thank you for this like chatter, Hammond said. This dude is awesome, Thank you. And then there was another one about direct warning to Elon Musk, not from me, but it says we are not here to place as politician. And then somebody wrote bring it. So any comment really helps. Anything helps to be honest with you. So just leave a rocket emoji like Sting Ding did in one of his comments.
So I really do appreciate everybody out there leaving comments, leaving five star reviews. The reviews are going up. The five star reviews are going up. They're not to a place that I want them to be yet, mainly because I never asked for anything. Sometimes I ask you to comment, sometimes I ask you to review, but it really is like I forget to do it too. All these podcasts that I listen to everyday, like how I built this with Guy Raz, I don't think I've ever given it a five star review.
I love that show. I listen to it everyday and it was just something that's sort of off there somewhere. Now there are some things coming up. I'm going to be covering Starship Flight 11 in the next few days, so if you're interested in that, make sure to hit the subscribe button or the follow button on whatever podcast platform you're on right now, Leave a comment and also leave a five star review because that's going to help us out tremendously. That's it everybody.
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