Industry optimism over robotaxis has returned, albeit in a modified form after recent exposure to the harsh realities of creating a fleet of fully autonomous vehicles. The CEO of ride-hailing giant Uber said on 6 August that his company is in “late stage” discussions with unnamed global autonomous vehicle developers to join the Uber platform, meaning that app users could find a driverless car in front of them sooner rather than later.
Tesla’s cars still only deliver Level 2 autonomy, meaning the driver still has to pay attention, compared to the Level 4 robotaxis need to hit. Musk did appear to rule out offering its cars to a ride-hail platform such as Uber’s in the event that Tesla did manage to solve autonomy and update its Full Self Driving package to actually deliver what the name currently falsely promises. “This would be a Tesla network.