Tesla is betting on Robotaxi this year.
Instead of launching in the United States (subject to numerous regulatory approvals across various states), probably Tesla is pushing for a soft launch in Mainland China …
Bullish or bearish?
EDIT:
Subsequent to the initial post, Reuters published an article indicating that US prosecutors are examining whether Tesla committed securities or wire fraud by misleading investors and consumers about its electric vehicles’ self-driving capabilities. Seems like Robotaxi by Tesla is still very remote for the US market …
US seeks answers from Tesla in Autopilot recall probe
U.S. auto safety investigators are seeking detailed answers and documents from Tesla in a probe into the automaker's December recall of more than 2 million vehicles to install new Autopilot safeguards.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said last month it was investigating after receiving reports of 20 crashes involving vehicles that had the Autopilot software updates installed under Tesla's recall. The agency's letter said it had identified “several concerns”, regarding the recall.
Tesla said in December its largest-ever recall covering 2.03 million U.S. vehicles – or nearly all of its vehicles on U.S. roads – was to better ensure drivers pay attention when using its advanced driver assistance system.
The NHTSA recall investigation covers models Y, X, S, 3 and Cybertruck vehicles in the U.S. equipped with Autopilot produced between the 2012 and 2024 model years.
Tesla, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has said repeatedly that Autopilot does not make vehicles self-driving and is intended for use with a fully attentive driver who is prepared to take over and has hands on the steering wheel.
NHTSA said it had sent Tesla an information request letter, which was made public on Tuesday, seeking details of the recall and documents by July 1.
NHTSA wants comparative data from Tesla on the performance of vehicles after receiving the recall including the number of hands on wheel warnings issued.
The agency said it had concerns after those 20 crashes as well as results from preliminary NHTSA tests of updated vehicles following Tesla's five-part recall remedy.
One issue under investigation is Tesla's recall allows drivers to set how they activate Autopilot by either allowing a single-pull or double-pull of the drive stalk.
NHTSA's letter said the single-pull activation of Autopilot “is not the default setting on vehicles that received the remedy in the field” and testing “showed it was possible to make this change while driving.”
Tesla has also made additional updates to reduce crashes including high speed captive turn lane collisions that are not part of the recall.
NHTSA said it “will assess the timing and driving factors behind these updates, their impacts on subject vehicle field performance, and Tesla’s basis for not including them”.
Last month, NHTSA said it found evidence that “Tesla’s weak driver engagement system was not appropriate for Autopilot’s permissive operating capabilities” and that this results in a “critical safety gap.”
NHTSA said during its Autopilot safety probe launched in August 2021 that it had identified at least 13 Tesla crashes involving at least one death and many more involving serious injuries in which “foreseeable driver misuse of the system played an apparent role.”
NHTSA noted Tesla's December recall “allows a driver to readily reverse” the software update.
Elon Musk proposed to launch robotaxis in China during April visit, state media report says
Elon Musk proposed testing Tesla's advanced driver-assistance package in China by deploying it in robotaxis, during his recent visit to the country, the state-backed China Daily newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing sources.
Chinese officials told the Tesla CEO that China “welcomes Tesla to do some robotaxi tests in the country” and hopes it can “set a good example”, the newspaper quoted the sources as saying.
However, Chinese authorities did not immediately approve its widespread use of Full Self-Driving (FSD) functions, the newspaper added.
Before the full rollout of its FSD functions, Tesla still needs to get approval to collect and transfer data that Tesla's cars need to train its driver-assistance features. The newspaper added that this issue wasn't discussed in detail during Musk's visit.
A person briefed on the matter told Reuters that Tesla is seeking to apply to launch the robotaxi tests in Shanghai, where the company's largest factory globally is located.
Tesla and the Shanghai city government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The China Daily report comes shortly after Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a whirlwind weekend trip to Beijing late last month, where he met Chinese Premier Li Qiang.
Musk on the trip intended to discuss the rollout of FSD and whether Tesla could secure government approvals to transfer data overseas that could prove pivotal in its development of autonomous vehicles, Reuters previously reported.
FSD is the most autonomous version of Autopilot software and was rolled out in 2020. Its features include self-parking, auto lane changes and traffic navigation.
Among the wins during Musk's trip, which was first reported by Reuters, was a key endorsement from a top Chinese auto association that said Tesla's Model 3 and Y cars were compliant with data-security regulations. That would enable local governments to allow Tesla cars into parts of China they were previously barred from, Chinese media reported, citing a statement from Tesla.
Tesla has also reached an agreement with Baidu to use the Chinese tech giant's mapping license for data collection on China's public roads, according to two people who at the time described that as a step toward FSD rollout in China.
The China Daily newspaper, however, citing a source close to Baidu, said that the deal only meant that the accuracy of Baidu's maps provided to Tesla would be improved and that it had no direct relation with FSD.
Baidu did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk has abandoned a longstanding goal for Tesla to make affordable electric cars for the masses and is looking to focus on autonomous driving software, robotaxis and its humanoid robot Optimus.
Last month, the company mentioned a “purpose-built robotaxi product” that it planned to build with a “revolutionary” manufacturing process, without offering a timeline for its release.
China has been at the forefront in the development of self-driving cars, and companies such as Baidu and Toyota-backed Pony.ai have launched robotaxi services in limited test zones in several cities.
In Tesla Autopilot probe, US prosecutors focus on securities, wire fraud
U.S. prosecutors are examining whether Tesla committed securities or wire fraud by misleading investors and consumers about its electric vehicles’ self-driving capabilities, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems assist with steering, braking and lane changes – but are not fully autonomous. While Tesla has warned drivers to stay ready to take over driving, the Justice Department is examining other statements by Tesla and Chief Executive Elon Musk suggesting its cars can drive themselves.
U.S. regulators have separately investigated hundreds of crashes, including fatal ones, that have occurred in Teslas with Autopilot engaged, resulting in a mass recall by the automaker.
Reuters exclusively reported the U.S. criminal investigation into Tesla in October 2022, and is now the first to report the specific criminal liability federal prosecutors are examining.
Investigators are exploring whether Tesla committed wire fraud, which involves deception in interstate communications, by misleading consumers about its driver-assistance systems, the sources said. They are also examining whether Tesla committed securities fraud by deceiving investors, two of the sources said.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating Tesla’s representations about driver-assistance systems to investors, one of the people said. The SEC declined to comment.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. Last October, it disclosed in a filing that the Justice Department had asked the company for information about Autopilot and Full Self-Driving.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
The probe, which is not evidence of wrongdoing, could result in criminal charges, civil sanctions, or no action. Prosecutors are far from deciding how to proceed, one of the sources said, in part because they are sifting through voluminous documents Tesla provided in response to subpoenas.
Reuters could not determine the specific statements prosecutors are reviewing as potentially illegal. Musk has aggressively touted the prowess of Tesla’s driver-assistance technology for nearly a decade.
Tesla videos demonstrating the technology that remain archived on its website say: “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”
A Tesla engineer testified in 2022 in a lawsuit over a fatal crash involving Autopilot that one of the videos, posted in October 2016, intended to show the technology’s potential and did not accurately portray its capabilities at the time. Musk nevertheless posted the video on social media, writing: “Tesla drives itself (no human input at all) thru urban streets to highway streets, then finds a parking spot.”
In a conference call with reporters in 2016, Musk described Autopilot as “probably better” than a human driver. During an October 2022 call, Musk addressed a forthcoming FSD upgrade he said would allow customers to travel “to your work, your friend’s house, to the grocery store without you touching the wheel.”
Musk is increasingly focused on self-driving technology as Tesla's car sales and profit slump. Tesla recently slashed costs through mass layoffs and shelved plans for a long-awaited $25,000 model that had been expected to drive sales growth.
“Going balls to the wall for autonomy is a blindingly obvious move,” the billionaire executive posted on his social-media platform X in mid-April. Tesla shares, down more than 28% so far this year, surged in late April when Musk visited China and made progress toward approvals to sell FSD there.
Musk has repeatedly promised self-driving Teslas for about a decade. “Mere failure to realize a long-term, aspirational goal is not fraud,” Tesla lawyers said in a 2022 court filing.
LEGAL CHALLENGES
Prosecutors scrutinizing Tesla’s autonomous-car claims are proceeding with caution, recognizing the legal hurdles they face, the people familiar with the inquiry said.
They will need to demonstrate that Tesla’s claims crossed a line from legal salesmanship to material and knowingly false statements that unlawfully harmed consumers or investors, three legal experts uninvolved in the probe told Reuters.
U.S. courts previously have ruled that “puffery” or “corporate optimism” regarding product claims do not amount to fraud. In 2008, a federal appeals court ruled that statements of corporate optimism alone do not demonstrate that a company official intentionally misled investors.
Justice Department officials will likely seek internal Tesla communications as evidence that Musk or others knew they were making false statements, said Daniel Richman, a Columbia Law School professor and former federal prosecutor. That is a challenge, Richman said, but the safety risk involved in overselling self-driving systems also “speaks to the seriousness with which prosecutors, a judge and jury would take the statements.”
FATAL CRASHES
Tesla’s claims about Autopilot and FSD have also drawn scrutiny in regulatory investigations and lawsuits.
Safety regulators and courts have raised concerns in recent months that corporate messaging about the technology – including the brand names Autopilot and Full Self-Driving – have imbued customers with a false sense of security.
In April, the Washington State Patrol arrested a man on suspicion of vehicular homicide after his Tesla, with Autopilot engaged, struck and killed a motorcyclist while the driver looked at his phone, police records show. In a probable-cause statement, a trooper cited the driver’s “admitted inattention to driving, while on autopilot mode … putting trust in the machine to drive for him.”
In Washington state, a driver remains “responsible for the safe and legal operation of that vehicle” regardless of its technological capabilities, a state patrol spokesperson told Reuters.
The same month, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation into whether a Tesla recall of more than 2 million vehicles in December adequately addressed safety issues with Autopilot.
NHTSA declined to comment.
The recall followed a long-running probe opened by regulators after cars with Autopilot engaged repeatedly crashed into vehicles at first-responder emergency scenes. Regulators subsequently examined hundreds of crashes where Autopilot was engaged and identified 14 deaths and 54 injuries.
Tesla disputed NHTSA's findings but agreed to the recall, which employed over-the-air software updates intended to alert inattentive drivers.
The NHTSA investigation found “a critical safety gap between drivers’ expectations” of Tesla’s technology “and the system’s true capabilities,” according to agency records. “This gap led to foreseeable misuse and avoidable crashes.”
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