Elon Musk Confirms Tesla Robotaxi Delay For “Important Design Change”

Just a few days ago, a report surfaced that Tesla was no longer going to reveal the robotaxi/Cybercab on August 8th. Despite several requests for clarification, Elon Musk and Tesla were silent about the report. Now, Musk appears to have confirmed the delay while also acknowledging that he did request a change to the vehicle.

Carscoops reached out to Musk and Tesla after a report from Bloomberg on July 11. It said that the CEO requested a rework of the design and for the team to build more prototypes. On the morning of the 15th, a former lawyer, Warren Redlich, who now creates Tesla-centric content posted a video with what he claims is insider info. 

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In it, he claims that the request Musk made left the engineers “speechless” in a positive way. In addition, he says that the engineering in general is “next-level stuff” according to his sources. Normally, we wouldn’t care at all about what some random person who claims to have sources inside the company says. In this case, though, Musk himself replied to the video. 

“Requested what I think is an important design change to the front, and extra time allows us to show off a few other things,” he says in the response. Notably, Redlich also claimed that the event wasn’t assuredly postponed. He says that Musk told the team to get the changes done as soon as possible. Beyond that, the timeline is still up in the air. 

It’s plausible that Tesla still unveils something on August 8 or drops another teaser perhaps to hold fans and shareholders over. The stock is down just under 2.5 percent over the last five days after a string of gains.

As we covered in our initial piece, a change this late in the development of the Cybercab likely indicates that full-scale production isn’t coming anytime soon.