We, Robot - technological innovations from Tesla (live recording)
In the latest presentation by Tesla, Franz organized the WeRobot event where he welcomed Elon Musk to discuss the future of autonomous transport. The presentation began by highlighting how close is Tesla's favorite vision of the future. Elon Musk shared with the attendees what modern technology offers in terms of autonomous vehicles. One of the main topics was the new RoboTaxi service, which featured 50 fully autonomous vehicles, including cyber cabs. While talking about the future of transportation, Elon pointed out how many people impatiently regulate their lives related to driving, especially in crowded cities like Los Angeles.
During the presentation, Musk delved into the costs of car ownership, indicating that many people are unaware of how often vehicles are used. He raised an important point that the average car is used for only about 10 hours a week, perfectly illustrating resource waste. With autonomous vehicles like the RoboTaxi, it's possible to multiply their utility value. These innovations aim at time and cost savings in transportation. This change could lead to a revolution in daily life, where buses might become more cost-effective while being less burdensome for users.
Elon emphasized the importance of transparency in the data that will allow autonomous vehicles to learn and adapt in real-time. He noted that safety will be a key element, and his team hopes that autonomous vehicles will be ten times safer than human drivers. He also mentioned the innovative inductive charging system aimed at facilitating the use of RoboTaxis for users.
There was also talk about a new vehicle - the Revovin - that aims to revolutionize the transport of goods and people in cities. This vehicle can carry up to 20 passengers and is designed to lower transportation costs within urban areas. Elon Musk announced that in the coming years, Tesla plans to launch the Cyber Taxi's production and introduce self-driving, unsupervised FSD systems in Texas and California. Optimistic forecasts say that the service might be launched as soon as next year.
At the end of the presentation, Musk also addressed autonomous robots that will assist people in their daily tasks. By introducing the concept of the Optimus robot, he shared the vision that soon everyone will be able to have a personal robot within their home that can perform various tasks. Interestingly, the cost of such a robot may range from $20,000 to $30,000, making it accessible to a wide audience. At the time of writing this article, Tesla's presentation has already gathered over 2.2 million views and 47 thousand likes online, indicating the vast interest in this future vision.
Toggle timeline summary
-
Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties.
-
Franz welcomes attendees to WeRobot on behalf of Tesla.
-
Elon Musk arrives at the event, promising an exciting show.
-
Elon showcases RoboTaxi, highlighting the presence of autonomous cars.
-
Elon discusses the potential of an exciting future beyond the dark narratives of sci-fi.
-
He mentions the pain of driving in traffic, particularly in Los Angeles.
-
Transition towards unsupervised full self-driving discussed for increased safety.
-
The cost implications of car ownership versus the potential of shared autonomous vehicles noted.
-
The value of time gained through autonomous driving is emphasized as significant.
-
Expectations for cost-effective autonomous transportation introduced.
-
Autonomous features expected in Tesla models with model production timelines disclosed.
-
Comparison of AI driving capabilities to human experiences and challenges.
-
Tesla's autonomous vehicles will be low-cost to produce and operate.
-
Elon mentions the presence of 50 Teslas driving autonomously for demonstration.
-
Future robotaxis will utilize inductive charging, eliminating the need for plugs.
-
Transformation of urban environments is discussed, focusing on green spaces.
-
Introduction of Revovin, a vehicle designed for high-density transport.
-
Robotics technology in Tesla vehicles is reminiscent of humanoid robot capabilities.
-
Optimus robots designed for personal assistance and companionship explained.
-
Elon shares his vision for an age of abundance through advanced robotics.
-
Optimus robots will interact with attendees at the event, showcasing their integration.
-
Elon concludes with an invitation to enjoy the party atmosphere.
Transcription
Statements made in this presentation are forward looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those projected. More details can be found in the written materials. Ladies and gentlemen, here, everywhere, online, around the world, outer space, I'm Franz. And on behalf of everybody at Tesla, welcome to WeRobot. I just want to thank Warner Brothers for hosting us here. As you know, this is the birthplace of many epic films, many of them depicting a vision of the future. We're here tonight to experience that future that is closer than you think. And who better than Elon, right, to show us that future? So it looks like Elon's on his way, so let's welcome him out here. Elon Musk Elon Musk Elon Musk Elon Musk Elon Musk Elon Musk Elon Musk Elon Musk Elon Musk Elon Musk Elon Musk Elon Musk Welcome. Welcome to the WeRobot party. We have quite a show for you tonight. I think you're going to like it. As you can see, I just arrived in the RoboTaxi, the cyber cab. And there's 20 more where that came from. So they've been traveling. There's no people in them, as you can see. The cars are just going by with no people. We have 50 fully autonomous cars here tonight. So you'll see Model Ys and the cyber cab, all driverless. You'll be able to take a ride in the cyber cab. There's no steering wheel or pedals. So I hope this goes well. We'll find out. So you see a lot of sci-fi movies where the future is dark, dismal, where it's not a future you want to be in. So I love Blade Runner, but I don't know if we want that future. I think we want that duster he's wearing, but not the bleak apocalypse. We want to have a fun, exciting future that if you could look in a crystal ball and see the future, you'd be like, yes, I wish I could be there now. That's what we want. So when we think about transport today, there's a lot of pain that we take for granted that we think is normal. Like having to drive around LA in three hours of traffic. People that live in LA, try to get from Pasadena to El Segundo during rush hour. You can fly to another city faster than you can get across down LA. And you have to drive the whole way, unless you're in a Tesla, of course. Tesla already does quite well at this supervised self-driving. So supervised full self-driving is actually working quite well. I'm sure there's people in the crowd, you're using that, yeah? So we'll move from supervised full self-driving to unsupervised full self-driving, where you could fall asleep and wake up at your destination. But there's also a challenge for a lot of people that cars cost too much. I mean, when you factor in everything that goes into a car, and the car insurance, and the car payments, and the storage of the car, it's very expensive. So with the, and you say like, how often are, how many hours a week are cars used? Your average passenger car is only used about 10 hours a week out of 168 hours. So the vast majority of the time, cars are just doing nothing. But if they're autonomous, they could be used, I don't know, 5 times more? Maybe 10 times more. So you could actually, for the same car, would have 5 times as much value, maybe 10 times as much value. It's, there's 168 hours in the week, and like I said, only 10 of them are used for driving. So, and then a bunch of those hours are looking for a parking spot, which is, you know, can be pretty annoying at times. So we want, with autonomy, you get your time back. This is a very big deal. So it's not just a safe, it'll save lives, like a lot of lives, and prevent injuries. I think we'll see autonomous cars become 10 times safer than a human. I mean, if you think of times past where there were, there used to be an elevator operator in every elevator. But once in a while, they'd get tired, and accidentally tear somebody in half, you know. So, now we have automated elevators. You just get in the elevator, and you press a button, and you don't even think about it. And it just takes you to the floor. And if you did see an elevator operator with a big relay switch, you'd be like, that's weird. Now, that's how cars will be. And it's not just the lives saved in injuries, but if you think about the cumulative time that people spend in a car, and the time they will get back, that they can now spend, well, I guess, on their phones, or watching a movie, or doing work, or whatever you want to do. You can think of the car in an autonomous world as being like just a little lounge. You're just sitting in a comfortable little lounge, and you can do whatever you want while you're in this comfortable little lounge. And when you get out, you'll be at your destination. So, yeah, it's going to be awesome. So, in fact, I think the cost of autonomous transport will be so low that you can think of it like individualized mass transit. The average cost of a bus per mile for a city, not the ticket price, because that is subsidized, but the average price is about a dollar a mile. Whereas the cost of a cyber cab, we think probably over time, the operating cost is probably going to be around 20 cents a mile. And price, including taxes and everything else, probably ends up being 30 or 40 cents a mile. So, yes, and you will be able to buy one. Yes, exactly. And we expect the cost to be below $30,000. And I think there will be an interesting business model where, let's say somebody is an Uber or Lyft driver today. Where they can actually sort of manage a fleet of cars and sort of manage, I don't know, 10, 20 cars. And just sort of take care of them like a shepherd tends their flock. You have a little flock of cars, and you're the shepherd, and you take care of your flock of cars. I think that would be pretty cool. I think it's going to be a glorious future. It's going to be really something special. So, yes, all excellent questions. So, 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 3 and Model Y. And then we expect to be in production with the Cyber Cab, which is really highly optimized for autonomous transport. In probably, well, I tend to be a little optimistic with time frames. But in 2026. So, yes. Before 2027, let me put it that way. Let me put it that way. And we'll make this vehicle in very high volume. But well before that, you will experience a robotic taxi via the Model 3 and Model Y program. And Model S and X too. But the Model 3 and Y will achieve unsupervised full stop driving with permission in wherever regulators essentially approve it in the U.S. And then to follow in outside the U.S. And the Cybertruck too, yes, of course. Sorry, I don't want to be, yes, yes. All our cars, basically. All cars that we make. Let's not get nuanced here. All right, next slide. So, one of the reasons why the computer can be so much better than a person is that we have millions of cars that are training on driving. So, it's like living millions of lives simultaneously and seeing very unusual situations that a person in their entire lifetime would not see. But, hopefully. Yes, exactly. So, with that amount of training data, it's obviously going to be much better than what a human could be. Because you can't live a million lives. And it's also, it can see in all directions simultaneously. And it doesn't get tired or text or any of those things. So, it will naturally be, like I said, 10, 20, 30 times safer than a human. Just for all those reasons. And I want to emphasize that the solution that we have is AI and vision. So, there's no expensive equipment needed. So, the Model 3, Model Y, and S and X that we make today will be capable of full autonomy unsupervised. And that means that our cost of producing the vehicle is low. Now, we are going to actually overspec the computer for the cyber cab. So, our AI5 computer will be somewhat overspec. Because I think there's actually also an opportunity, sort of like an Amazon Web Services, where if the car is driving for 50 hours a week, there's still over 100 hours left. And there's a potential there to have a massive amount of distributed inference compute. Where if you've got, like, say, a fleet of 100 million vehicles, and a kilowatt of efficient inference compute, you have 100 gigawatts of compute. Which is really quite substantial. And if it's there, you might as well use it. So, yeah. So, that I think will make sense. So, alright. So, our autonomous future is here. As I said, we've got 50 Teslas driving autonomously. We're trying to give you a sense of what cities will be like in the future. And when you get in, you'll see, like, it's really quite a wild experience to just be in a car with no steering wheel, no pedals, no controls. And it feels great. So, and we have enough vehicles here. So, everyone should be able to try it out. And experience the set that we've built here. It's a very big set. So, it's like really, we've used, I don't know, 20, 30 acres or something like that. It's really big. So, it goes on, the ride's long. And we set it up to feel like a ride, like a park ride. So, it'll be cool. And you'll get to experience it tonight. Something we're also doing is, and it's really high time we did this, is inductive charging. So, the Robotaxi has no plug. It just goes over the inductive charger and charges. So, yeah. It's kind of how it should be. Thanks, guys. I love you, too. So, one of the things that, like, is really interesting is how will this affect the cities that we live in. And when you drive around a city, or when a car drives you around a city, you'll see there's a lot of parking lots. There's parking lots everywhere. Parking garages. And so, what would happen if you have an autonomous world is that you can now turn parking lots into parks. And so, we're taking the ing lot out of parking lot. Welcome. So, there's a lot of opportunity to create green space in the cities that we live in. So, that would be quite fantastic. Oh, and also, what happens if you need a vehicle that is bigger than a Model Y? The Revovin. The Revovin is, this is, we're going to make this, and it's going to look like that. Now, can you imagine going down the streets and you see this coming towards you? That'd be sick. So, this can carry up to 20 people, and it can also transport goods. So, you can configure it for goods transport within a city, or transport up to 20 people at a time. So, this is going to, the Revovin is what's going to solve for high density. So, if you want to take a sports team somewhere, or you're looking to really get the cost of travel down to, I don't know, 5, 10 cents a mile, then you can use the Revovin. Some people call it the Rover van, but. So, yeah. You know, one of the things we want to do, and you've seen this with the Cybertruck, is we want to change the look of the roads. The future should look like the future. So, speaking of robots. Everything we've developed for our cars, the batteries, power electronics, the advanced motors, gearboxes, the software, the AI inference computer, it all actually applies to a humanoid robot. It's the same techniques. It's just a robot with arms and legs instead of a robot with wheels. And we've made a lot of progress with Optimus. And as you can see, we started out with someone in a robot suit, sort of that. And then we've progressed dramatically year after year. So, if you extrapolate this, you're really going to have something spectacular. Something that anyone could own. So, you could have your own personal R2D2 C3PO. And I think, at scale, this would cost something like, I don't know, $20,000, $30,000. Probably less than a car, is my prediction, long term. It'll take us a minute to get to the long term. But fundamentally, at scale, the Optimus robot, you should be able to buy an Optimus robot for, I think, probably $20,000 to $30,000 long term. And what can it do? It'll be able to do anything you want. So, it can be a teacher, babysit your kids, it can walk your dog, mow your lawn, get the groceries, just be your friend, serve drinks. Whatever you can think of, it will do. And, yeah, it's going to be awesome. I think this will be the biggest product ever of any kind. Because I think everyone of the 8 billion people of Earth, I think everyone's going to want their Optimus buddy. And there's going to be maybe two. And then they'll be producing products and services. I predict, actually, provided we address risks of digital super intelligence, 80% probability of good outcome. Look on the bright side. The cup is 80% full. The cost of products and services will decline dramatically. And basically, anyone will be able to have any products and services they want. It will be an age of abundance. The likes of which people have not, almost no one has envisioned. It'll be something special. So, now one of the things we wanted to show tonight was that Optimus is not a canned video. It's not walled off. The Optimus robots will walk among you. Please be nice to the Optimus robots. So you'll be able to walk right up to them. And they'll serve drinks at the bar. And you'll directly, I mean, it's a wild experience just to have humanoid robots. And they're there. Just in front of you. So, yeah, with that, let's party! I love you guys, too. If you look at that gazebo over there, let's get the party started. Let's party! What is love? Yeah! I don't know, but you're not there. I give you my love, but you don't care. What is right? What is wrong? Give me a sign. What is love? Baby, don't hurt me. Don't hurt me. No more. What is love? Baby, don't hurt me. Don't hurt me. No more. What is love? What is wrong? Give me a sign. What is right? What is wrong? Don't hurt me. No more. What is love? Baby, don't hurt me. Don't hurt me. No more. What is right? What is wrong? Give me a sign. What is right? Don't hurt me. No more. What is wrong? Don't hurt me. No more. What is right? Baby, don't hurt me. Don't hurt me. No more. What is wrong? Don't hurt me. No more. What is wrong? Don't hurt me. No more. What is right? Baby, don't hurt me. No more. What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right? What is right?