"I'm telling you, there's a damn wolf this time," the Tesla CEO told investors
Elon Musk doesn’t want to be known as the “boy who cried FSD” anymore, a moniker he gave himself for his many years of repeated promises related to autonomous driving. Now, he claims that Tesla $TSLA’s (TSLA) technology is better than ever and will be used for rideshare services as soon as June.
“I know people have said, well, Elon is the ‘boy who cried wolf’ like several times,” Musk said on Wednesday’s earnings call. “I’m telling you, there’s a damn wolf this time, and you can drive it. In fact, it could drive you. It’s a self-driving wolf.”
Although Tesla’s core business is still selling electric vehicles, the automaker has increasingly made autonomy its priority. Besides Full Self-Driving (FSD), a driver assistance package consumers can purchase for their Teslas, Tesla is also working on Optimus, a line of humanoid robots, and a designated robotaxi, the Cybercab.
Musk on Wednesday said a paid rideshare service akin to Uber $UBER (UBER) and Lyft $LYFT (LYFT) would launch in Austin, Texas, around June. According to the city, three self-driving vehicle companies — Amazon $AMZN’s (AMZN) Zoox, AVRide, and ADMT — are testing their vehicles in Austin, while Hyundai Motor Co.’s (HYMTF) Motional is in the “mapping” phase. Last fall, Google $GOOGL’s (GOOGL) Waymo began offering free rides in some parts of Austin through a partnership with Uber.
Tesla’s designated robotaxi, the Cybercab, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, the company said Wednesday. Any rideshare services will likely rely on self-driving Model Y and Model 3 vehicles, which have been put into testing at Tesla’s Fremont, California, factory.
“This is not some far-off mythical situation. It’s literally five, six months away,” Musk said. “While we’re stepping it – putting our toe in the water gently at first just to make sure everything is cool, our solution is a generalized AI solution.”
The CEO also said he is “very confident” Tesla will release “unsupervised” FSD in “many cities” in the U.S. this year, with a nationwide launch in 2026. Supervised FSD requires a “fully attentive driver” who needs to keep their hands on the steering wheel. Musk also said he believes FSD would launch in Europe and China later than the U.S. due to complex regulatory requirements, predicting that unsupervised FSD would launch in “most countries” by the end of 2026.
Musk, a senior advisor to President Donald Trump, has said he will use his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project to help push for streamlined federal rules for autonomous vehicles. Trump’s team has reportedly considered doing just that.
Tesla hopes to build 10,000 Optimus robots this year and enter volume production in 2026, with plans to eventually sell them for between $20,000 and $25,000.
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