At 7 PM local time on October 10th, the much-anticipated Tesla Robotaxi, also known as the Cybercab, was finally unveiled. However, Tesla's stock price plummeted nearly 9% in response.

The Cybercab adopts the stainless steel exterior from the Tesla electric pickup, the Cybertruck, and eliminates traditional steering wheels, pedals, and rearview mirrors. It also claims to use an inductive charger for wireless charging, making its overall design very avant-garde. At the start of the event, Musk personally rode in the Cybercab across a movie set, demonstrating the actual operating effects to the audience.

According to Musk, the Cybercab is priced at around $30,000, lower than similar models. He also estimated that the operating cost of the Cybercab would be around $0.2 per mile (approximately 1.6 kilometers), significantly lower than the traditional taxi's cost of $2 per mile.

In addition to the Cybercab, Musk also showcased an autonomous passenger van called the Robovan. This vehicle has a futuristic appearance with no visible wheels, can accommodate up to 20 people, and can also be used to provide ride-hailing services. Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus was also very active at the launch, serving tea and water. Musk mentioned that its cost would be between $20,000 and $30,000.

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The launch event was very cool. As early as April of this year, Musk stated that the Robotaxi business could potentially raise Tesla's valuation to $5 trillion, making it a leading company in the future mobility sector, which is why it has attracted the attention of tech enthusiasts and investors.

However, in my view, this event seemed more like a less thoughtful performance rather than the launch of imminent real products, which was somewhat disappointing. It can be judged that the Robotaxi business is still far from bringing tangible performance to Tesla, and the stock price plunge is understandable.

This is not entirely due to technical aspects; the real challenge Tesla faces is how to legally and safely bring the Robotaxi to the market, with many obstacles to overcome.

Firstly, Tesla has not yet obtained a Level 3 autonomous driving license, and for the Cybercab to operate fully autonomously, it should at least obtain a Level 4 autonomous driving license. However, Tesla's current design has unnecessarily increased many difficulties for itself.

General Motors' Cruise had originally planned to use an autonomous taxi called Origin, which, like the Cybercab, did not have a steering wheel or pedals. But due to regulatory reasons, they had to abandon the original plan and use the Bolt EV with a steering wheel and pedals. The design without rearview mirrors is also a bit too avant-garde; the initial design of the Cybertruck also lacked rearview mirrors, using rear-facing cameras instead, but later rearview mirrors were installed. Therefore, it is highly likely that the Cybercab will also have to老老实实ly install all these in the future.

The Cybercab's gull-wing doors are prone to hitting pedestrians when opened and may not open or open slowly in the event of an accident, which is not conducive to passengers' rapid evacuation. A more suitable design would be sliding doors. Although the Robovan uses sliding doors, the chassis is designed too low to hide the wheels, which obviously cannot cope with complex road conditions.These designs not only increase the certification difficulty for Tesla's Robotaxi but also affect its market acceptance.

Therefore, perhaps the real purpose of Tesla's release of the Cybercab and Robovan is not to operate on the road, but to showcase what they believe to be the future form, as Musk said, the future should be like the future.

So, how far does Tesla have to go to truly realize the operation of Robotaxi? Looking at the journey of Waymo and Cruise launching autonomous taxi services, Tesla at least faces multiple challenges such as technical permits, regulatory restrictions, commercialization, and public acceptance.

On the technical level, Tesla's end-to-end FSD autonomous driving system has been running for several months, but there are still long-tail problems and seesaw effects. It is worth noting that the lidar company Luminar revealed that Tesla purchased at least about 2,000 lidars (worth $2.1 million) this year. Although such a small number should mainly be used for research and development, it may indicate that Tesla still has a long way to go in the research and development of autonomous driving technology, needs to maintain an open attitude, and should not exclude the introduction of more sensors to improve the safety and reliability of the system.

Regulations are one of the main obstacles to the implementation of Tesla's Robotaxi.

According to public information, Tesla currently only holds the lowest level of autonomous vehicle road test permit issued by the California Department of Motor Vehicles and must be tested on the road under the supervision of a safety officer.

Moreover, the regulatory standards for autonomous vehicles vary from state to state in the United States. If Tesla wants to fully operate, it not only needs to solve the regulatory issues of each state one by one but also needs to meet the safety standards set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The department requires manufacturers to submit detailed safety test data and can only operate autonomous taxis on public roads after approval. Cruise was once investigated for multiple accidents involving its autonomous taxis and eventually recalled some vehicles.

In addition, although Musk claims that robotaxis are very profitable, the reality is that under limited operation, Waymo loses more than $1 billion annually, and Cruise has accumulated losses of more than $5 billion since 2018. If Tesla launches a brand-new Robotaxi model instead of upgrading existing electric vehicles, how to ensure that it can be commercialized quickly and achieve profitability as soon as possible to avoid huge losses is still a huge challenge.

Finally, in terms of market acceptance, Tesla's Robotaxi business is not without worries. According to YipitData statistics, the purchase rate of Tesla's FSDv12 version in 2024 is only 2%. Although Musk denied this, he did not provide actual data, and it seems that it may not look very good. Therefore, whether consumers are generally willing to entrust their life safety to Tesla in the future is still unknown, which will affect the speed of market acceptance, not to mention facing resistance from existing taxi drivers.

So, although Musk has spent a lot of money to get close to the Trump team, even at the expense of becoming a "fancy jumper - a funny jumper" in Trump's election activities, judging from this press conference, Tesla seems to have not successfully utilized this advantage. The self-willed science fiction design has exceeded the limitations of existing traffic regulations and safety standards, and it is not something that Trump can solve by intervening.Therefore, in general, we believe that Tesla has not taken the various regulations and market issues it faces seriously. This time, Musk has again indirectly let everyone down, and the actual implementation of the robotaxi will not come as quickly as he said.

We agree with Musk that the future should be like the future, but as a technology entrepreneur, the most important thing is to find a feasible way to the future.