Musk Confirms Tesla's Robotaxi Event is Pushed Back

Sugar Design

In a report that originally appeared from Bloomberg, it was claimed that Tesla will be delaying its much-anticipated 8/8 Robotaxi event by two months to October 2024.

While sources other than Bloomberg hadn’t confirmed the report at the time. Musk has now announced the delay on X.

Tesla’s stock dropped nearly 8.5% on the day of Bloomberg’s article, but this delay is only a couple of months and doesn’t change Tesla’s strategy. The drop in Tesla’s stock ended back-to-back gains over the previous two weeks. It had hit a high of $270 earlier in the day before the news broke.

Update: Musk just took to X a few minutes ago to confirm that the event is delayed. Although he didn’t provide a new timeline, it appears that it may indeed be October according to the original Bloomberg article. What Musk did reveal in his post is why it’s being delayed. Musk said he requested an important design change to the front of the vehicle. It’s not clear what the change is or whether it’s completely cosmetic or plays a more important role, possibly having to do the front camera or the additional of additional cameras.

Musk went on to say it also gives Tesla some extra time to show off a “few other things.” With Musk commenting on the situation and the design change, he basically confirms what we already expected, that Tesla will be showing off the robotaxi vehicle at the event. If you’re curious about what the vehicle will look like, take a look at Rimac’s robotaxi to get an idea of what to expect from Tesla’s version.

Requested what I think is an important design change to the front, and extra time allows us to show off a few other things

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2024

Why the Delay?

The delay – of approximately two months – has been communicated internally, but not publicly announced just yet. Bloomberg goes on to mention that the design team was told to rework certain elements of the Cybercab, necessitating the delay.

If Bloomberg’s report is correct, it sounds like Tesla’s unveil event will be largely focused on showing off the vehicle, instead of demoing how it will work. Of course, it could still be both, but given past events, Tesla has always shown off the vehicle years before it hits production.

Rimac recently showed off their version of robotaxi vehicle named Verne, and surprisingly, it could almost pass for Tesla’s own robotaxi. A lot of design cues in Rimac’s version are elements we have already seen or expect to see in Tesla’s autonomous taxi.

A recent Tesla patent revealed that Tesla is incorporating a sanitation system into their robotaxi that will be responsible for analyzing and cleaning the vehicle’s interior, although the delay itself is likely tied more to a physical feature rather than software.

Another element we know almost nothing about is how Tesla plans to charge these robotic taxis. Will they rely on the existing charge port and adapt a solution like the robotic charging arm (video below) we saw almost eight years ago, or will wireless charging or a dock finally become realized?

While the delay for Tesla’s event appears to be related to the vehicle’s design itself and not further development of FSD, Tesla is wasting no time in getting FSD working for the upcoming vehicle. Model 3 vehicles have already been spotted with camera locations that resemble a robotaxi.

Is the Delay Accurate?

We expect that this delay might actually be true – Elon Musk usually takes to X within hours of such news breaking if it's false to refute it and hasn’t done so yet.

Tesla has delayed several of their events in the past, and a delay of a couple of months seems plausible. We should hear from Musk himself soon on whether this report is accurate.

Follow

Follow

Follow

A Look at Tesla's New AI Training Center at Giga Texas [VIDEO]

Not a Tesla App

Elon Musk provided a sneak peek into “Cortex”, Tesla’s new AI training center that has been under construction for quite a while at Giga Texas.

Previously, we saw some shots of the new wing for the massive water-cooled supercomputer cluster at Giga Texas, which was being built at the southern end of the Gigafactory.

AI4 Training

Cortex appears to be the name of the supercomputer cluster, and we can assume that it will be referred to that way from now on. Cortex will primarily focus on exploring and expanding FSD’s performance envelope to include AI4, which will begin to diverge from HW3 sometime soon. Tesla hasn’t yet unlocked the full potential of AI4, as it still runs HW3 in emulation mode, but with a few extra tricks that HW3 doesn’t have access to. These are mostly hardware compiler changes, but they make a significant difference in the speed of processing the AI model.

Tesla intends to continue supporting HW3, but it's already apparent that the FSD model for HW3 is smaller than the model for AI4. However, Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s Autopilot program director, expects performance to be similar for the most part.

One other thing that Cortex will likely be tackling is not just FSD in cars – but FSD in Optimus. Optimus uses the same principal technology behind FSD for movement, as well as understanding and learning tasks, so we can expect to see plenty of improvements as Tesla is now getting Cortex online.

Video of the inside of Cortex today, the giant new AI training supercluster being built at Tesla HQ in Austin to solve real-world AI pic.twitter.com/DwJVUWUrb5

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 26, 2024

Cortex, Not Dojo

What’s most interesting is that this new supercomputer cluster isn’t Tesla’s Dojo Supercomputers. Instead, this Cortex cluster is instead based on Nvidia’s H100 GPUs. Dojo was supposed to be Tesla’s in-house designed and specialized AI GPUs, meant to focus on optimizing FSD.

Dojo isn’t dead – but delayed from the sounds of it. We’re excited to see where Cortex takes Tesla in the future, and when Dojo shows up to join the party.

Follow

Follow

Follow

Tesla Drastically Reduces CCS Adapter and Retrofit Pricing

Not a Tesla App

Tesla has lowered the price for both the CCS adapter, as well as CCS retrofits for its entire lineup throughout North America. This includes a reduction in price for the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

CCS Adapter

Tesla has dropped the price of the CCS (Combo 1 – North America) from $250 USD to $125 USD ($345 CAD to $175 CAD). That’s a straight 50% price reduction, making Tesla’s OEM CCS Adapter one of the cheapest on the market.

CCS1 was the non-Tesla standard for EVs, prior to Tesla opening the NACS standard. Tesla vehicles that have completed the retrofit, or are built after the retrofit date, can use a CCS adapter to charge at any regular CCS station.

CCS Retrofit

The CCS retrofit enables Tesla vehicles before around September 2022 (depending on model and region) to charge at CCS stations using a compatible CCS-to-NACS adapter. Vehicles built before that date won’t be able to charge at CCS stations without this retrofit. The retrofit also comes with a complementary CCS adapter.

You cannot unbundle the CCS adapter from the retrofit purchase to reduce the price.

The retrofit has different pricing for the Model S/X and the Model 3/Y.

How to Check If You Need a Retrofit

If you’re not sure whether your vehicle is CCS capable, you can go to Controls > Software > Additional Vehicle Information. It will show a line near the middle titled “CCS Charging and third-party NACS DC charging.” Next to it it will show whether your vehicle supports third-party CCS charging or whether you'll need a retrofit.

NACS to CCS

And that’s not all – Tesla has drastically increased the production of the NACS to CCS adapter for non-NACS vehicles that are Tesla Supercharger approved, hitting a new record of 8,000 units per week.

Tesla has made massive strides in bringing one standard and improving the efficiency and up-time of EV charging throughout North America, and we’re glad to see them continuing this trend as they move forward.

Follow

Follow

Follow