The familiar ritual of getting into a car, taking the wheel and pressing the accelerator, is being challenged in Austin, Texas, where Tesla has begun commercial rides with its DRIVERLESS CYBERCAB, a two-seat/two-doors vehicle designed without a steering wheel or throttle/brake pedals.
The launch represents another super-chapter in the electric-vehicle race. It is an early test to see if the automobile can evolve from something people use to own and drive as private-cars, into something they simply just summon and use, without belabouring their personal car on daily basis.
Tesla’s strategy in manufacturing is always built around scalability. The Cybercab is being manufactured at a Gigafactory Texas, using an unconventional “unboxed” production system that assembles major vehicle sections in parallel, before bringing them together. The approach is intended to reduce factory space, manufacturing complexity and costs, potentially giving Tesla a market-advantage, if autonomous taxis become a mass-market service.
The vehicle’s minimalist design, reinforces that ambition. With no steering wheel, pedals or conventional driver controls, hundreds of mechanical and electrical components can potentially be eliminated. Tesla is also pursuing manufacturing techniques, intended to reduce dependence on traditional paint-shop operations. The implications for this pursuit are substantial, with respect to the global automotive industry. If Tesla can produce autonomous vehicles more cheaply and operate them at lower cost, the competition may move from horsepower and styling, to software, transport-fleet economics, artificial intelligence and access to passengers.
This is a transition from maintaining car-ownership-reputation to just consuming mobile-transport services, with almost outright-transferred individual energy exaction. Tesla’s higher stake seems to be pushing-off private-vehicle, one of human’s most valuable asset, towards the eventuality of high consumption of autonomous vehicle services, stresslessly.
A privately-owned car, spends much of its lifespan partly-driven and partly-parked. A robotaxi by contrast, can potentially operate throughout the day, generating revenue from repeated journeys. Tesla in its statement said, it is targeting operating costs that is below roughly 30% per mile; on the premise that if this figure is achieved at scale, it could challenge conventional ride-hailing economics and put pressure on established transportation businesses.
Passengers on the other hand, would feel the potential benefits are equally significant. Noting autonomous transportation could eventually provide cheaper transport, expand mobility for people unable to drive and reduce the need for parking in dense urban areas. But the social-change would not be as easy as it seems to transform.
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