Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta has been out for over a month now, and its users are still sharing some pretty impressive reviews. However, one investing firm believes Tesla could take its autonomous strategies to the next level by developing a human ride-hailing service of its own.
On Monday, Ark Invest reiterated an investment suggestion that Tesla start its own human-driven ride-hailing service, in order to help the electric vehicle (EV) company refine its autonomous driving strategy. The suggestion claims that a Tesla ride-hailing service would de-risk the company’s financial model, as well as lay a foundation for and increase potential for a future robotaxi service from Tesla.
I listened to an Ark Invest analyst break down the future of Tesla with data and I'm now bullish on Tesla.
Definitely not at this price but after the coming pull back.
— Sam Okoroafor (@Samuel_NET) November 24, 2020
In addition to these improvements, a human-run ride service would allow Tesla’s FSD and Autopilot systems to exponentially increase the amount of data the company could collect, further bolstering its autonomous services, which rely on a huge amount of data in order to provide autonomous driving.
This would allow the company to essentially teach its FSD and Autopilot systems more about roads, while putting a vertical business infrastructure in place that could someday be overtaken by the company’s autonomous systems.
Additionally, the move would be a major benefit to society, providing a major public need with a streamlined plan as to how autonomous driving would someday become the service’s norm.
In any case, it’s exciting to see so many cases of Tesla’s FSD and Autopilot being used, and that’s only expected to increase with time. With the proposed Tesla ride-hailing service, the company could grow even more in the years to come, and would likely be ready to deploy full FSD and Autopilot offerings in a much more rapid fashion.
Yesterday, after receiving his 2020 Axel Springer Award in Berlin, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he was “extremely confident” the company will be able to achieve and release Level 5 autonomy to its customers next year.
Now, we’ve all long heard about Musk’s robotaxi and FSD timeline, so take his latest statement with a grain of salt.
