Reported by Cailian Press on October 11th (Reporter Zhang Yipeng), after a delay of nearly an hour from the originally scheduled time, Tesla Robotaxi finally made its appearance on the evening of October 10th local time.

At the 'Robotaxi Day' event held at the Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, Tesla introduced its autonomous taxi named 'CyberCab' and the autonomous freight van 'Robovan' for the first time. Tesla CEO Musk announced that Cybercab does not have a steering wheel and pedals. There were a total of 50 vehicles present, and it is expected that by 2025, complete unsupervised autonomous driving will be achieved in Texas and California. The mass production of Cybercab is estimated to begin in 2026.

The current usage cost of domestic online car-hailing in the USA is 1 USD per mile, and it is expected to decrease to 0.2 USD per mile in the future. Musk undoubtedly understands the market's attention, stating that Cybercab will be deployed in large quantities in the future.

Debut of CyberCab Sparks Industry Discussion

There has been anticipation in the industry for the arrival of Tesla Robotaxi. After the end of the press conference, Cailian Press reporters interviewed several industry professionals immediately.

"The design of Cybercab and Robovan is very impressive and quite refined," said an industry insider in the domestic top-tier autonomous driving sector, who chose to remain anonymous. Tesla has unsurprisingly chosen to delve deeply into the field of unmanned taxis and unmanned buses that many autonomous driving technology companies have long been working on. From the perspective of applications, the two-seater design of Cybercab may limit its use cases. Robovan has certain market potential, and there is an expectation for mass production and implementation as soon as possible.

However, Musk did not mention the entry plan of the FSD technology related to Cybercab into China this time. Yet, the industry has already considered it as one of the most powerful competitors in the future domestic Robotaxi market.

Tesla may not necessarily become a disruptor. Taking Tesla's entry into the Chinese market as an example, although Tesla's technology is somewhat advanced, in terms of market promotion, the FSD system adopts a subscription model with fees much higher than its competitors. This makes it difficult for Chinese consumers to accept in the short term. Yuanrong Qixing CEO Zhou Guang stated that the localization of FSD in China will take some time, and domestic host factories still have certain advantages in localization. 'End-to-end is the most promising path to general physical AI, it is currently only at the 1.0 stage. In the next few years, there will be continuous technological breakthroughs in physical AI. Robotaxis may not be that far off, we will continue to monitor the progress of end-to-end technology in the physical world.'

The Vice President of Xiaoma Zhixing, a subsidiary of GAC Group, may receive a strategic investment of $27 million, believes that Tesla's FSD performs well in assisted driving (L2), but there is still a significant gap in the technology and safety indicators required for autonomous driving (L4), mainly due to its use of a pure visual solution. 'For non-motor vehicle objects, pure visual solutions have inherent defects in detection, especially in road scenarios in domestic cities with a high number of pedestrians and cyclists. If there is a situation where objects on the road are not visible, the autonomous driving mode will not decelerate or evade in a timely manner, leading to safety hazards.'

Tesla is about to share the latest progress on the Robotaxi, and I am looking forward to it.' On the day before the release of the Tesla Cybercab, He Xiaopeng, Chairman of Xiaopeng Auto, considered Tesla as a benchmark brand and responded to this hot topic, revealing the progress of Xiaopeng Auto's related business: achieving a software user experience for benchmarking top overseas Robotaxis on mass-produced vehicles in the second half of 2025, officially launching the first Robotaxi product in 2026. 'Currently, we are accelerating the pace of Xiaopeng's Robotaxi business. (Compared to Tesla), we will focus on the Robotaxi product itself, not the operation, focusing on improving the parking ability in Robotaxi scenarios, customizing the interior and exterior scenes to enhance passenger experience, strengthening safety redundancy, etc.' He Xiaopeng stated.

Who is stronger in single-car intelligence and vehicle-road-cloud integration?

Although the industry's views on the release of the Tesla Cybercab vary, it is a fact that the Robotaxi track is heating up.

Upstream in the industry chain, Wanma Technology recently reached cooperation with relevant companies, planning to create point-to-point Robotaxi routes in Changzhou; Ningbo Joyson Electronic Corp. responded to investor inquiries about 'changes in the interior layout of Robotaxi development', stating that the company actively laid out pre-research products in response to future changes in the development of autonomous driving and Robotaxi industries, has already applied for multiple patents, and will effectively promote product upgrades during the popularization process of autonomous driving and Robotaxi.

China's vast automobile market and complex traffic environment provide rich scenarios and data for the application of autonomous driving technology. Chinese autonomous driving companies are more experienced in facing complex scenarios and can better adapt to the needs of markets in different countries and regions." Zhou Guang believes that in addition, China's autonomous driving industry chain is relatively complete, with close collaboration between companies, which can create synergies and drive rapid technological iteration.

In addition to a more complete industry chain, the steadily advancing vehicle-road-cloud integration in China will further accelerate the commercial landing of Robotaxi, and provide richer application scenarios.

"The integration of single Asia Vets and car-road cloud is not contradictory at all. Single asia vets is the foundation of car-road cloud integration, while car-road cloud integration is the upgrade of single asia vets." In the opinion of Academician Li Keqiang of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the issues that single asia vets find difficult to solve, such as data segmentation and limited sensing capabilities, can be addressed by using car-road cloud integration to avoid the three-dimensional characteristics of single asia vets causing traffic accidents and congestion. "At the same time, the ultimate development of intelligent cars relies on computing power, while onboard computing power is limited by cost and usage conditions. The onboard computing tasks can be offloaded and achieved through an integrated approach. This way, more complete data patterns can be obtained from autonomous vehicles and roadside units, covering a wider range of traffic scenarios with more complex scenarios and comprehensive data types."

In September of this year, Hainan Province explicitly stated in the pilot construction plan for intelligent connected vehicles 'car-road cloud integration' released that the core technological path will be a data-driven intelligent driving new solution that combines single asia vets technology with the car-road cloud concept, aiming to create a demonstration province with the longest mileage, richest scenes, and unique tropical island characteristics of car-road cloud integration.

Zhang Yongwei, Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of the China Electric Vehicle Hundred-Person Forum, believes that there is no need to oppose single asia vets and car-road cloud integration. In the future, there will only be one intelligent driving integration development path that leverages China's advantages. "FSD is end-to-end, with the first end being the data collected by the car itself, so its data source is only one end, relatively single. If China can develop car-road cloud, we can provide the second end from the roadside and the cloud side, with inputs from both ends and output from one end, thus creating a Chinese feature," said Zhang Yongwei.