Posted on: October 11, 2024, 09:44h.
Last updated on: October 11, 2024, 09:54h.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, this week unveiled plans for “Cybercabs,” fully autonomous self-driving vehicles that stand to forever change how people move about cities.
Musk pulled up to the public announcement on the Warner Bros. movie studio lot in Los Angeles in a Cybercab. The billionaire, worth an estimated $246 billion, told the crowd that the AI-powered vehicles don’t come with steering wheels or pedals, but are instead propelled autonomously.
We’ll move from supervised full self-driving to unsupervised full self-driving where you can fall asleep and wake up at your destination,” Musk said. “It’s going to be a glorious future.”
Tesla expects to offer full self-driving technology on its popular Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in Texas and California, pending federal and state approvals, sometime in 2026. The Cybercabs are expected to cost less than $30K.
Las Vegas Game-Changer
Musk and Tesla are no strangers to Nevada and Las Vegas. The Silver State is home to the company’s Gigafactory, one of the world’s largest plants for electric motors, energy storage products, vehicle powertrains, and batteries. The facility is located less than an hour from Lake Tahoe and puts out a billion cells of batteries annually.
Musk has also changed how people move about the Las Vegas Strip. Whether in town for a convention or leisure, Musk’s Boring Company continues to expand the Las Vegas Loop.
The underground public transportation network uses a fleet of 70 Tesla Model Y vehicles to move people back and forth between the Resorts World Station on the Strip’s northern end south to the Las Vegas Convention Center. Future planned stops include Harry Reid International Airport, Allegiant Stadium, UNLV, downtown Las Vegas, and possibly, the Oakland A’s forthcoming MLB ballpark and a stop for the high-speed Brightline rail project, should it come to fruition.
Tesla’s Cybercabs, if they become mainstream, would additionally overhaul the Las Vegas experience. The autonomous vehicles could threaten cabs and ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft.
During the Cybercab rollout, Musk also provided an update on Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robots, which he says continue to learn and adapt to how humans function. Musk believes the robots, which are projected to cost around $30K, will be able to perform mundane tasks like mowing the lawn, unloading groceries, and cleaning dishes.
Those robots could also threaten casino hospitality jobs like waitstaff, housekeepers, bellmen, porters, receptionists, and concierge.
“Whatever you can think of, it will do,” Musk said of the robot’s possibilities.
Skeptics Abound
Before Musk’s Cybercabs can become a reality, analysts say Tesla must perfect the fully autonomous driving capabilities of the vehicle.
Tesla yet again claimed it is a year or two away from actual automated driving — just as the company has been claiming for a decade,” said Musk critic Bryant Walker Smith, a professor studying autonomous vehicles at the University of South Carolina.
Robots are already in use in Las Vegas, primarily behind the scenes where they fill drink orders for waitstaff. Companies like the robots because they serve precise pours and reduce overhead.
Customers, however, haven’t exactly embraced the novelty. Casinos that have tried customer-facing robots have faced backlash from guests for slow service and light pours compared to real human bartenders. Robots are also used as security, as the automated machines can move about a casino and resort floor surveilling conditions for a variety of threats.
