Elon Musk has been teasing the idea of a fully self-driving Tesla for years, but we are still waiting for it. The promise of cars that drive themselves and make human drivers unnecessary has been a key part of his vision for the future, but so far, we've mostly seen big promises and missed deadlines.
Now, with Tesla's robotaxi about to launch, it feels like a turning point, either Musk delivers, or his reputation might suffer.
It’s no shock that excitement about Tesla has faded, especially with competitors like Waymo already showing their driverless abilities, though not perfect. Waymo’s method of removing the driver entirely and working in limited areas seems like a smart way forward, while Tesla is sticking to a wider, more ambitious (and riskier) vision. It's a big gamble to think we can jump from supervised self-driving to fully autonomous cars, especially given the basic problems Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software still has, like wet roads, vision errors, and dangerous disengagements.
What makes this robotaxi release important is the pressure on Musk to stop relying on hype. Unlike Waymo, Tesla is selling cars, not just a service, which adds a whole new level of expectation. If people are really going to depend on these cars, they can't be flashy demos or unfinished models anymore. At some point, the technology has to work like Musk has been promising for nearly a decade, and lives could be at risk if it doesn’t.