Elon Musk says his next product will be the most important Tesla has ever produced. And he says it’s (finally) almost here

Will Elon Musk finally make good on six years of robotaxi promises?

Will Elon Musk finally make good on six years of robotaxi promises? Musk said in a social media post this week that Tesla’s long-awaited robotaxi service will roll onto the streets of Austin, Texas on June 22. The Tesla CEO is betting the company’s future on autonomous vehicles (AV) and a robotaxi service – which will hopefully inject much-needed cash just as the company’s sales and profits are slumping. While Musk is championing the promise of robotaxis – self-driving cars without a driver than can ferry around paying passengers – there are concerns about both safety and their viability as a business. Traditional automakers like General Motors have already abandoned plans for a similar service despite spending billions, blaming the “considerable” resources needed and “an increasingly competitive robotaxi market.” Ford dropped its AV efforts altogether. But even with their exit, some experts say the real competition for Tesla are the human drivers of Uber and Lyft. “The challenge is less technological and more economic,” said Bryant Walker Smith, an affiliated scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, an expert in autonomous vehicles. “If a company that needs to pay engineers and mechanic and remote assistance has to compete with Uber drivers who might be making less than minimum wage to maintain their own older vehicle, that’s kind of hard to do.”