Update: Tesla’s We, Robot event has concluded, but there’s still plenty to catch up on. The Cybercab, which Tesla is pitching as the future of autonomous transport, was revealed to be a two-seater that could be purchased for less than $30,000. Then, in a surprise reveal, CEO Elon Musk showed off the larger Robovan for transporting up to 20 people. And Anthony Levandowski, who co-founded Google’s self-driving car program, broadly supported Musk’s visions in a post-event interview.
Check out the full archive of the event below, which is set to skip the 53 minutes of techno that preempted the actual event, or go back and follow along with our live blog from Thursday.
Tesla loves to put on a show, and Thursday’s Robotaxi reveal might just be the flashiest of them all.
The electric vehicle maker is slated to unveil its much-hyped Robotaxi vehicle at Warner Bros. Discovery’s movie studio in Burbank, California. For those attending, doors will open at 5 p.m. PT, with remarks beginning at 7 p.m. PT today.
Tesla will livestream the “We, Robot” event on X, which Musk owns, and on the automaker’s usually streams events live on its YouTube page. The YouTube backup is a smart option, considering the technical issues X’s livestreams have faced. And you can follow along with our own live blog of the event here.
Musk first teased the Robotaxi event in April, setting a date of August 8 for a reveal — a date that Tesla had to push back due to “an important design change to the front.”
The Robotaxi appears to have come at the expense of a next-generation $25,000 EV that Musk also promised. A few weeks after Musk announced the Robotaxi event, he slashed more than 10% of Tesla’s workforce and said the automaker was going “balls to the wall for autonomy.”
Musk has promised autonomous capabilities in Tesla vehicles for years. The company’s advanced driver-assistance system is rather brazenly named Full Self-Driving (FSD), even though it is not fully self-driving and requires a human driver to pay attention and take over if needed — a fact that is borne out again and again in drive-along videos that fans regularly post on social media.
When Musk first floated the idea of robotaxis in 2019, the idea was that some existing Teslas would be able to act as autonomous robotaxis with only software updates, potentially unlocking an opportunity for Tesla owners to make money from their cars when not driving them. That plan, which was supposed to result in millions of robotaxis on the road by 2020, has never been implemented. At the time, Musk said that in places where there aren’t enough people to share their cars, Tesla would provide a dedicated fleet of robotaxis.
We expect this reveal — which we remind you is at a Hollywood studio — to be less about the autonomous technology and more about the vehicle itself. Musk has said he wants to build a robotaxi without a steering wheel or pedals, and images of the vehicle that were included in Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk biography, which was published in 2023, reveal a Cybertruck-inspired, two-door, two-seater compact vehicle.
Whatever the event brings, TechCrunch will be following it live and bringing you the news as it happens, so stay tuned.
This post has been updated following the conclusion of Tesla’s We, Robot event.
