No steering wheel, no pedals? Elon Musk to reveal self-driving Robo Taxi this week at 'We, Robot' event

Tesla is set to pull back the curtain on its much-anticipated Robo Taxi this Thursday at Warner Bros. Discovery’s movie studio in Burbank, California. The event promises to be nothing short of a spectacle, with doors opening at 5 p.m. PT and formal remarks starting at 7 p.m. PT. In typical Tesla fashion, the event, aptly named “We, Robot,” will also be livestreamed on the company's YouTube page and on X (formerly Twitter), ensuring Tesla enthusiasts around the world don’t miss out.

Tesla faces a watershed moment on Thursday when CEO Elon Musk takes the stage at the Warner Bros Hollywood studio to unveil much-delayed plans for a robotaxi, a project that has reignited the electric vehicle maker's stock, despite cooling expectations for EV growth. Musk has said Tesla's robotaxi product - called a Cybercab - will be a new model of vehicle that can drive itself and work on a Tesla ride-hailing platform. Tesla also will allow owners to make money off their cars by putting them on the ride-hailing network as autonomous cabs, which he has called a "combination of Airbnb and Uber."

CEO Elon Musk has been teasing the idea of an autonomous taxi for years, and this reveal might finally deliver on some of the ambitious promises made in the past. The Robo Taxi was initially expected to make its debut in August, but a last-minute design change pushed back the timeline. Musk has often talked about removing the traditional elements of driving—steering wheels and pedals—and early glimpses, as depicted in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk, suggest a compact, two-door design with a distinctly futuristic, Cybertruck-like aesthetic.

Tesla relies on cameras and artificial intelligence to drive current cars, with driver supervision but without the costly additional hardware associated with radar systems and lidar technology that other robotaxi players use. Musk expects that improving this technology will let him crack a still-nascent and tightly regulated industry that has resulted in billions of dollars in losses for others.

This unveiling appears to have come at the cost of another project, the highly awaited $25,000 next-generation electric vehicle, which seems to be on the backburner for now. Earlier this year, Musk made it clear that Tesla was going all out for autonomy, even cutting more than 10 per cent of the company’s workforce to ensure focus on this vision.

Since first mentioning robotaxis in 2019, Musk has pitched the idea that Tesla owners could one day let their cars work for them, autonomously driving passengers around while they sit back and make a profit. Although that dream of millions of autonomous Teslas on the road by 2020 never materialized, Tesla's progress in autonomy has kept fans eagerly anticipating the next steps.

The “We, Robot” event is expected to put a spotlight more on the vehicle itself than its self-driving capabilities. The Robo Taxi might well be Tesla’s next big leap, aimed at revolutionizing urban mobility without a driver—or even a steering wheel—in sight. With the event taking place in a Hollywood studio, it's likely to be just as much about showmanship as it is about automotive innovation.

For now, all eyes are on Thursday's reveal to see if Musk can bring the long-promised future of driverless taxis one step closer to reality.