When rumors came out that Tesla’s robotaxi reveal event would be delayed, it was not the greatest shock the world has ever seen. Musk has been overly optimistic on robotaxi timelines for about a decade. The date for the event originally seemed to be pulled out of the air, and there’s suspicion that the point of the announcement was largely to distract from dropping sales . Many just saw it as Elon Musk trying to protect Tesla’s stock price.
My assumption, being used to covering Elon Musk and Tesla for a dozen years, was that Tesla wasn’t going to be announcing Tesla robotaxi, but would simply be showing a robotaxi prototype that could one day theoretically be used for robotaxi service once the software is ready. Sort of like how the Tesla Semi was revealed years before it went into limited commercial service and the Tesla Roadster 2 was shown several years ago but still isn’t on the road.