On Thursday evening at 7 o'clock, October 10th, local time in California, which is 10 o'clock in the morning on October 11th, Beijing time, $Tesla (TSLA.US)$ the highly anticipated self-driving taxi service Robotaxi's event, Robotaxi Day, will be held, and the Robotaixi physical vehicle, called Cybercab, will make its first appearance.

Musk has stated that he firmly believes in the transformative power of Robotaxi and is worth betting Tesla's financial future on this product. He also expects that this business could increase Tesla's valuation to 5 trillion dollars. In other words, Tesla is staking the company's future on the success of Robotaxi. The Tesla preview of the live broadcast also quoted Musk as saying, 'This will be a historic day.'

Bloomberg reports that Robotaxi Day will have a long-term impact on Tesla and its CEO, Musk's fate, which is significant for Musk's personal reputation.

Stating that Robotaxi Day will affect the entire Tesla company and Musk's fate is because, if the event is successful, it will help alleviate doubts about Musk's self-driving strategy, while a replay of past product launch mistakes may exacerbate these doubts. Tesla is already behind some competitors in deploying self-driving cars on public roads, and commercializing the Robotaxi business in Tesla's main markets may require regulatory approval for several years. In addition, self-driving technology is far from perfect.

Indicating that Robotaxi Day is about Musk's reputation is because Musk has previously postponed the planned product releases multiple times. For example, Wall Street Journal previously mentioned that nearly three months ago, Tesla was reported to have postponed the RoboTaxi launch event from August to October, to allow the team responsible for the project more time to create additional prototypes and redesign certain elements of RoboTaxi.

Moreover, several Tesla executives have recently announced their resignations. Earlier this week, some media outlets reported that in the past week, four executives who announced their departure were all direct subordinates of Musk, including Tesla's Director of Public Policy and Business Development, Jos Dings, and Tesla's Global Automation and Safety Policy leader, Marc Van Impe. The frequent departure of executives undoubtedly raises doubts in the capital markets about whether Tesla has management issues.

According to some media reports, Robotaxi is a compact vehicle with two doors, two seats, similar to the Cybertruck, with doors that open like butterfly wings, featuring sharp edges and stainless steel trim, and possibly no steering wheel. The difference between this vehicle and other Tesla models is the ability to operate the car without a human driver present, potentially using a combination of cameras and computing power for navigation, instead of relying on the lidar sensors used by General Motors' Cruise and Google's Waymo autonomous vehicles, which Musk considers too expensive and unnecessary.

Tesla may also announce progress in autonomous driving technology at the Robotaxi Day. Previously, Tesla stated that the capabilities of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software have been accelerating. "Based on current trends, it seems we should be able to increase the number of miles between interventions to a high enough level that far exceeds humans, possibly achieving unsupervised autonomous driving by the end of this year."

Bloomberg cites insider information stating that at Robotaxi Day, Musk is expected to discuss Tesla's plans for developing FSD for its electric Semi truck and how to use this technology for transporting goods, but a Semi demonstration is not expected. He may also introduce the development status of Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus.

Since the release of Optimus in 2022, Tesla has provided almost no updates. In July of this year, Musk revealed on social media that Tesla will start small-scale production of Optimus for internal use next year, with the potential for mass production by other companies in 2026. Research institution Bernstein believes that Tesla may have already updated the progress on Optimus, and the caption for the Robotaxi Day event, "We, Robot," may hint at such updates being included in Tesla's plans.

Editor/Somer