Musk sent four tweets to recruit talents. When will Tesla's self-driving taxi hit the road?

Recently, Musk sent four messages on social media to recruit talents for the autopilot /AI team. Tesla also launched a recruitment page in official website with the slogan "Help? Revolutionary? That? The world? With what? Full? Autopilot. However, there is a fact hidden behind the loud slogan: Tesla's research and development of autonomous driving technology is in trouble.

20 19 in may, musk boasted that "by the end of 2020, Tesla will have 1 10,000 self-driving taxis on the road". However, as the redemption time approached, Musk not only retracted his madness, but also recruited new people for the autonomous driving team. This series of behaviors can't help but make the outside world doubt the real research and development progress of Tesla's autonomous driving.

Why boast?

When attending a podcast program recently, Musk defended himself by saying that by the end of 2020, Tesla will have 65,438+0,000 self-driving taxis on the road instead of 65,438+0,000 self-driving taxis.

At the fourth quarter financial report meeting of 20 19, Musk said that he would realize * * * car sharing before launching the self-driving taxi fleet. This means that Musk will still launch Tesla taxis, but these "self-driving" taxis will not be able to drive automatically in the short term.

2065438+In March 2009, Tesla repaid the debt of 920 million dollars, which was in a period of shortage of funds. In May, Tesla submitted a prospectus to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and successfully raised $2.3 billion. In this prospectus, Tesla did not mention autonomous driving and autonomous driving taxis.

After submitting the prospectus, Musk told investors in a conference call that he should focus on the research and development of self-driving taxis. That is, in that conference call, Musk promised for the first time that by 2020, there will be 6,543,800 self-driving taxis on the road.

In this regard, foreign media commented: "In view of the fact that self-driving taxis will become an important part of Tesla's business, it is very surprising that the words' self-driving taxis' and' self-driving' are omitted from the prospectus. The prospectus makes people feel that Tesla will not even engage in the manufacturing business of self-driving cars. "

Perhaps when he boasted about Haikou, Musk knew that Tesla could not fulfill the contract on time, but in order to gain the support of investors, he still told a big lie. When he recently admitted that Tesla could not fulfill the contract on time, he was once again labeled as "suspected of securities fraud".

The significance of autonomous driving

The reason why self-driving taxis are used to "lie" is because Musk knows that this technology that extends to the future can best provoke the public's nerves. Within Tesla, autonomous driving has also been placed in an extremely important position. Musk said in the tweet: "The autopilot and AI teams report directly to me, and we can meet, send emails and send messages almost every day." He even said before that Tesla's other businesses would be insignificant compared with self-driving taxis.

Why does Tesla attach so much importance to autonomous driving? Because this technology is of great significance to Tesla. Recently, Ark Investment Management Company, the theme investment fund, published an open letter and announced Tesla's valuation model. Ark predicts that Tesla's expected share price in 2024 (50% probability) will reach $7,000, bear market (25% probability) 1500, bull market (25% probability) or even 1500.

In order to realize this vision, Tesla must meet three factors: First, the gross profit margin is close to 40%; Second, capital efficiency increases with the expansion of production scale; Third, the evolution of autonomous driving ability and the popularity of autonomous taxi service.

Ark Fund believes that the taxi network operated by fully automatic driving can completely break the business model of traditional automobile manufacturers. Tesla may change from a one-time trading model with hardware profit margin to a circular trading model with software profit margin, charging passengers by miles and charging platform fees.

In addition, the Ark Fund also proposed the Tesla "flywheel" model. That is, the self-driving taxi network should provide funds for Tesla and invest in factories to produce more cars, which should reduce production costs and expand Tesla's self-driving fleet.

Real progress

However, more and more cases show that it is not easy to launch self-driving taxis in a short time. Amnon, CEO of Mobileye? Shashua said in an interview that the self-driving taxi originally scheduled to be launched in 2020 will be postponed until early 2022. Magna, one of the largest auto parts companies in the world, recently terminated its cooperation with the travel company Raffles in the automatic driving system.

Musk claimed that "it will take several months to realize some autopilot functions", but he also began to recruit talents for the autopilot /AI team on Twitter, which seems to mean that Tesla's existing team can't overcome the difficulty of autopilot. As one of the best autonomous driving teams in the world, if even Tesla's existing team can't overcome it, then its current challenges can be imagined.

20 19 In the fourth quarter, Tesla delivered new cars112,000 vehicles, with revenue of 7.38 billion US dollars, up 2% year-on-year, higher than the market expectation of 7.02 billion US dollars, and the net profit attributable to ordinary shareholders was/kloc-0.5 billion US dollars. By the end of 20 19, Tesla's free cash flow reached 10 billion USD. "We are investing as soon as possible, and if there is any necessary expenditure, we will spend it," said Musk of Mazhuang, a military power. Musk's hand-picked autonomous driving business is obviously a "necessary expenditure."

Although the status quo of Tesla's autonomous driving team is not optimistic, there are indications that Tesla is pouring a lot of resources into the autonomous driving business. At the same time, Musk's prediction of autonomous driving tends to be rational, which makes him look more like a serious person.

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.