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New Tesla video shows an early glimpse at how Elon Musk's Robotaxi service could look

Teslas lined up
The Robotaxi is set to be unveiled on August 8.Patrick Pleul/Getty
  • A Tesla employee posted a video on LinkedIn of a ride-hailing platform, following previous teasers.

  • The video shows the employee requesting the car on an app, adjusting its settings, and getting in.

  • Elon Musk has said that Tesla will officially reveal its Robotaxi at an event on August 8.

We're less than two months away from Tesla's Robotaxi unveiling, but we're getting an early glimpse at the ride-hailing platform on which the autonomous vehicles are expected to operate.

In a LinkedIn post on Saturday, Rosalie Nathans, whose profile says she's a senior manager for used cars and online sales at Tesla, shared a video of the ride-hailing experience, which the clip says is "coming soon."

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"Still pinching myself that I got to demo Tesla's ride-hailing platform!" she wrote.

The video shows Nathans requesting the service by pressing a black-and-white circle with the word "summon" on an app. Within a few seconds, the app shows a map of a car three minutes from her pickup location, along with the vehicle's seating capacity and temperature. The video shows Nathans adjusting its temperature before the car arrives.

Once she's inside, the video shows a central screen display with a map of the route at the top and what seems to be her arrival time, the number of minutes until her arrival, and the number of miles to the destination below. The display also seems to allow passengers options to personalize their experience by listing the car temperature, audio volume, and song playing on the display.

At first glance, it looks a lot like Uber or Lyft — though there's not a human driver visible in the video.

Nathans did not respond to a request for comment.

Her video gives us our best look yet at Elon Musk's vision for an autonomous-car service that may one day offer Tesla owners the ability to earn money on the side by adding their vehicles to the fleet. The Tesla CEO has said in the past that they could earn about $30,000 a year from doing so.

In a longer video about Tesla's goals posted on X in late May, the electric-vehicle giant teased what the ride-hailing service could look like. That video was posted with a caption asking shareholders to vote on proposals at the annual shareholder meeting, like Musk's $55 billion pay package and moving the company's headquarters to Texas. Both were approved at the meeting last week.

Tesla's Full Self-Driving software, which is still in beta, is the underlying software that the company is working on to power a stand-alone Tesla Robotaxi service.

The software, which costs Tesla owners $15,000 or a monthly fee of $100 to $200, requires drivers' constant supervision and has drawn regulatory scrutiny and lawsuits. It can switch lanes, recognize stop signs and traffic lights, self-park, and enter a highway without a driver's direct input.

The Robotaxi has become a big priority for the EV giant. Reuters reported the carmaker had pivoted away from a cheaper $25,000 EV to focus on Robotaxis — which Musk denied. The Tesla CEO has hyped up the potential for FSD as a key pillar of Tesla's valuation for years and said in 2021 that "the day FSD goes to wide release will be one of the biggest asset value increases in history."

Tesla hasn't given too many other details about what the Robotaxi will look like. Musk has previously voiced the desire to have it forgo mirrors, pedals, and steering wheels, according to Walter Isaacson, his biographer.

Musk said in April there would be a Tesla Robotaxi unveiling on August 8.

Read the original article on Business Insider