Tesla’s recent Q1 earnings call was full of ups and downs, from the revelation that its net income dropped by 55 per cent to $1.1 billion to the announcement that it was, after all, going to pursue plans to build cheaper electric cars. But Elon Musk also chose the opportunity to tease screenshots of his self-driving ride-hailing app, which he hopes will one day rival the series offered by Uber and Waymo.
Some of the screenshots revealed during the announcement looked eerily similar to the Uber interface. But there are key differences – one menu revealed a "summon" feature, which looks as if it’s only applicable to fully autonomous self-driving vehicles.
Other screens showed the ability to adjust the temperature inside the cabin, select the music and volume, as well as change the seating angle and position.
The company said: "We have been investing in the hardware and software ecosystems necessary to achieve vehicle autonomy and a ride-hailing service," according to Electrek.
"We are currently working on ride-hailing functionality that will be available in the future. We believe the Tesla software experience is best-in-class across all our products, and plan to seamlessly layer ride-hailing into the Tesla App," it added.
Read between the lines and it looks as if Tesla is suggesting the ride-hailing functionality will become part of the current Tesla app, as opposed to a standalone piece of software.
However, the company is yet to achieve fully unsupervised self-driving, meaning these teaser screenshots are very much merely a proof of concept for now.
Blue sky thinking
While it is encouraging that Tesla is giving us an insight into its future plans, it is highly unlikely we will see fully driverless taxis from the marque any time soon.
Despite it promising massive improvements to the technology with the recent FSD v12 software updates, Tesla is yet to gain permission from the appropriate authorities to run and test completely self-driving vehicles on public roads.
What’s more, the current Full Self-Driving (FSD) and Autopilot tech continues to hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. This week, a 56-year-old Tesla driver in Washington was arrested and charged with vehicular homicide after hitting a 28-year-old motorcyclist with his 2022 Model S, which he was driving with Autopilot activated at the time, while allegedly distracted by his phone.
Tesla's Q1 earnings call revealed both a drop in revenue and net income, which is likely why announcements surrounding AI, autonomous ride-hailing and its plans to press on with more affordable electric vehicles were sprinkled in to the announcements in an attempt to sweeten things with investors.
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