Tesla unveiled its long-awaited robotaxi at a Hollywood studio Thursday night, though fans of the electric vehicle maker will have to wait until at least 2026 before they are available. CEO Elon Musk pulled up to a stage at the Warner Bros. studio lot in one of the company’s “Cybercabs,” telling the crowd that the sleek, AI-powered vehicles don’t have steering wheels or pedals. He also expressed confidence in the progress the company has made on autonomous driving technology that makes it possible for vehicles to drive without human intervention. Tesla began selling the software, which is called “Full Self-Driving,” nine years ago. But there are doubts about its reliability. “We’ll move from supervised Full Self-Driving to unsupervised Full Self-Driving. where you can fall asleep and wake up at your destination,” he said. “It’s going to be a glorious future.” Tesla expects the Cybercabs to cost under $30,000, Musk said. He estimated that the vehicles would become available in 2026, then added “before 2027.” The company also expects to make the Full Self-Driving technology available on its popular Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in Texas and California next year. “If they’re going to eventually get to robotaxis, they first need to have success with the unsupervised FSD at the current lineup,” said Seth Goldstein, equity strategist at Morningstar Research. “Tonight’s event showed that they’re ready to take that step forward.” When Tesla will actually take that step, however, has led to more than a little anxiety for investors who see other automakers deploying similar technology right now. Shares of Tesla Inc. tumbled almost 7% before the opening bell Friday. Waymo, the autonomous vehicle unit of Alphabet Inc., is carrying passengers in vehicles without human safety drivers in Phoenix and other areas. General Motors’ Cruise self-driving unit had been running robotaxis in San Francisco until a crash last year involving one of its vehicles. Also, Aurora Innovation said it will start hauling freight in fully autonomous semis on Texas freeways by year’s end. Another autonomous semi company, Gatik, plans to haul freight autonomously by the end of 2025. “Tesla yet again claimed it is a year or two away from actual automated driving — just as the company has been claiming for a decade. Indeed, Tesla’s whole event had a 2014 vibe, except that in 2014 there were no automated vehicles actually deployed on public roads,” Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies automated vehicles, told The Associated Press in an email. “Now there are real AVs carrying real people on real roads, but none of those vehicles are Teslas. Tonight did not change this reality; it only made the irony more glaring.” Tesla had 20 or so Cybercabs on hand and offered event attendees the opportunity to take rides inside the movie studio lot — not on Los Angeles’ roads. At the presentation, which was dubbed “We, Robot” and was streamed live on Tesla’s website and X, Musk also revealed a sleek minibus-looking vehicle that, like the Cybercab, would be self-driving and can carry up to 20 passengers. The company also trotted out several of its black and white Optimus humanoid robots, which walked a few feet from the attendees before showing off dance moves in a futuristic-looking gazebo. Musk estimated that the robots […]