Elon Musk was insistent on building self-driving "robotaxis" that were impossible for humans to operate, and he became grumpy when his engineers objected for safety reasons.
The Tesla CEO was so obsessed with the idea that he shot down his own plan to build a $25,000 electric car in favor of robotaxis, which he predicted would earn their owners more than $30,000 a year by dispatching them to run errands or give driverless rides to other people, according to excerpts from Walter Isaacson's new book published by Axios.
"There is no amount that we could possibly build that will be enough," Musk said, according to Isaacson. "Someday we want to be at 20 million a year."
Musk became convinced that robotaxis would eliminate the need for people to own cars, but his engineers pushed back on some of his plans to remove the capability of human drivers to operate them because they weren't confident the company's full self-driving technology (FSD) would be ready.
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"If we go down a path of having no steering wheel, and FSD is not ready, we won't be able to put them on the road," Tesla's longtime chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, told Musk in August 2022.
The designer urged Musk to accept cars with a steering wheel and pedals that could be easily removed later, when the FSD tech was ready, but the CEO stubbornly stood his ground.
"No mirrors, no pedals, no steering wheel," Musk said. "This is me taking responsibility for this decision."
However, his deputies continued to resist, and Isaacson wrote that Musk sank "into one of his very cold moods."
"Let me be clear," Musk said slowly, according to the book. "This vehicle must be designed as a clean robotaxi. We're going to take that risk. It's my fault if it f*cks up. But we are not going to design some sort of amphibian frog that's a halfway car. We are all in on autonomy."
Ultimately, his deputies eventually persuaded him to cover his bet "in a non-challenging way," Isaacson wrote.
