Robotaxi Fleets Over A Decade Away According To Lucid CEO

Lucid’s CEO gives his take on the matter…

For quite some time, the future of the taxi industry has been believed to be autonomous. Elon Musk seemed to be a firm believer in this idea, expressing plans back in 2019 to have Tesla robotaxis on the road by 2020. However, those plans never came close to being implemented, and Tesla’s Full Self Driving (FSD) system still remains at Level 2 autonomy. Peter Rawlinson, the CEO of Lucid Motors, offers his own take on robotaxis.

In an interview last Thursday, Rawlinson gave an estimate of around 10 years before robotaxis became possible. He stated the road to full autonomy would be “an intellectual mountain to climb in terms of software”. 

For those unfamiliar with Rawlinson, he was a chief engineer at Tesla before he founded Lucid.

A robotaxi, in theory, is a fully self-driving vehicle that does not require the presence of a human operator. At the moment, the Lucid Air sedan features an advanced driver assistance system(ADAS) dubbed DreamDrive which consists of 14 cameras and a Lidar sensor. Although the Level 2, or Level 2+ system is far from full autonomy, Rawlinson described it as “an unprecedented system in terms of its technical sophistication”.

What are your thoughts on robotaxis and full autonomy? Do you agree with Rawlinson? Tell us down in the replies section below.