Tesla’s Robotaxi Unveiled: A Glimpse of the Future or a Strategic Distraction?

On June 22, $Tesla(TSLA.US) officially launched its Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, USA. The first batch of 20 unmodified Model Y vehicles was put into a small-scale trial operation. From the feedback of the first week's road tests, its performance was mixed, sparking widespread market discussion.

I. Debut Performance: Highlights and Issues Coexist

Although still in its early stages, Tesla's Robotaxi has already demonstrated the potential of its "end-to-end" technology approach:

Highlights: The driving style is highly human-like, with smooth and natural acceleration and braking; it has strong game-theoretic capabilities, able to handle most urban road conditions and some unexpected situations; it is highly flexible, capable of entering complex routes such as parking lots to pick up passengers, which is currently difficult for rule-based algorithms like Waymo to achieve.

However, the road tests also revealed numerous issues:

Issues: Frequent driving errors, such as entering the wrong lane, sudden hard braking, and choosing incorrect routes; vehicles still require safety operators to handle emergencies; the operational area is strictly limited to a 77 square kilometer area in the southern part of Austin.

These initial issues are essentially the result of the "black box" nature of the "end-to-end" approach combined with insufficient localized driving data accumulation. As we previously analyzed in "The Ultimate Question: Can FSD Support a $1.5 Trillion Tesla?", although this technology approach may initially underperform compared to Waymo, its potential for exponential growth driven by data and computing power, stronger generalization capabilities, and lower costs make its business model more viable. Therefore, the current poor performance is merely a sign that the technological inflection point has not yet been reached, and its long-term potential should not be underestimated.

II. Deep Strategy: Robotaxi as the Perfect Prelude to "Selling Cars" + "Selling FSD Software"

As early as the end of last year, we clearly stated our core view: Tesla's Robotaxi may just be a "decoy," hiding a deeper commercial strategy of "selling cars + selling FSD software," as detailed in "Tesla's "Stealth Move": Is the Robotaxi Story Just a "Decoy"?"

1. The Reality of Market Scale: Selling Cars is the "Vast Ocean"

The ceiling of the shared mobility market is far lower than that of car sales. For example, in China, the private car travel market accounted for as much as 85.4% in 2023, while shared mobility was only 3.8%.

Even in the United States, according to our estimates, the mature Robotaxi market would be about $83.5 billion, requiring approximately 1.6 million vehicles. If Tesla captures 80% of the market share, it would only need to operate about 1.3 million vehicles. This scale is clearly disproportionate to the 4 million annual production capacity planned for Cybercab. This precisely confirms that Cybercab's true identity is the next-generation "blockbuster car" rather than a simple taxi.

2. The Ultimate Goal: Building an "Apple-like" Integrated Ecosystem:

The Robotaxi project is the perfect catalyst for achieving this ultimate goal. When FSD technology is fully recognized and accepted by the market through Robotaxi operations, and intelligence becomes the core decision factor for car buyers, Tesla will successfully build a high-barrier ecosystem similar to Apple's "hardware-software integration." At that time, FSD software will strongly drive car hardware sales and continue to create value as a high-margin standalone product.

III. Implementation Path: From Texas Pilot to Global Vision

As we analyzed in "Tesla FSD: Can the Vast Ocean Withstand the Test of Reality?", Tesla's plan is methodical:

Current Objectives

The deployment of Robotaxi in Texas is a precise marketing and data collection action, with direct goals including:

a. Increasing FSD Subscription Conversion Rate: Using passengers' positive experiences to spread on social media, driving traffic to the main FSD V13 version.

b. Shaping and Managing Reputation: Operating in controlled scenarios (specific groups + specific scenarios) to avoid negative reviews and build confidence among mainstream users.

c. Efficient Data Collection: Collecting high-quality driving data through a self-operated fleet to feed back into algorithm model optimization and iteration.

Therefore, this deployment is more like a precise advertising campaign aimed at achieving the internal goal of increasing the FSD subscription conversion rate to 30% and reaching 1 million paying users.

IV. Future Path: From Demonstration Operation to Solution Sales

Tesla's path to realizing its ambitions is also very clear, divided into three steps:

1. Testing Phase (Q2 2025 - End of 2026): In specific cities like California and Texas, a small fleet of Model 3/Y (equipped with FSD V13) will be used for testing, focusing on validating technology and market education.

2. Mass Production Phase (Starting in the second half of 2026): Large-scale deployment of 500,000 self-operated vehicles (mainly existing Teslas, supplemented by a small number of Cybercabs), expanding the range to the entire United States. It is worth noting that the scale of 500,000 is still at the demonstration operation level for true ride-hailing giants (such as Didi with over 10 million active drivers annually), rather than full competition.

3. Vision Phase (Expansion): Once the demonstration effect is established, this "hardware-software integrated" solution (centered on Cybercab) will be packaged and sold to car rental companies, ride-hailing operators, and even individual consumers, ultimately driving Cybercab to achieve the grand goal of 4 million annual sales.

V. Conclusion and Outlook

In the current context of declining car sales, Tesla's stock performance is already deeply tied to the progress of FSD. In the future, we need to focus on two major variables:

Another Breakthrough on the Technology Front: The current Robotaxi model operating in Texas is only equipped with HW4.0 hardware, and the software is still a fine-tuned version of FSD 13.2.9.

Pay attention to the iteration of HW5.0 hardware (with a pre-computing power of 2000+ TOPS) and FSD 14.0 software version. This is seen as the key to whether FSD performance can achieve a qualitative change and truly widen the gap.

Commercial Expansion: Closely monitor the promotion progress of Robotaxi in multiple cities in the United States, as well as regulatory breakthroughs and implementation speed in Europe and China. This is the touchstone to test whether its business model can be accepted by the global market and convert technological advantages into commercial value.