Elon Musk's Greed Threatens Many to Become 'Sacrificial Lambs'

Elon Musk is predicted to become the first person on Earth with a fortune exceeding US$1 trillion. His position as the richest person in the world is unassailable. Not content with being the ruler of space through his rocket and satellite company SpaceX, the king of social media and AI via X and xAI, and an electric car giant with Tesla, Musk still wants to increase his wealth through a driverless automatic taxi business, or robotaxi, under Tesla. Tesla’s robotaxi initiative has indeed been slow compared to competitors such as Waymo from Alphabet (Google). However, Tesla’s robotaxi is rapidly expanding its service network. On Wednesday, local time, Tesla announced it had launched an unsupervised robotaxi in the Austin Metro area, Texas. The robotaxi itself has become controversial due to immature safety issues and its potential to threaten the profession of online drivers. Expanding robotaxi services and the wider adoption of fully self-driving software are key to Tesla’s growth strategy after Musk shifted the company’s focus from electric vehicles to AI and robotics. ‘Unsupervised robotaxi now reaches all Austin Metro areas,’ wrote Tesla’s official robotaxi account on X. Tesla’s robotaxi service has been operating in Austin for almost a year, but customers still experience many disruptions. For instance, many customer reports detail waiting times of more than 30 minutes. According to a presentation by Austin officials, Tesla has around 50 vehicles operating in the city, while Alphabet’s Waymo operates more than 250 vehicles in the same area. Musk stated last month that he expects cars capable of fully driving themselves without a human safety supervisor to become more widespread in the US later this year, following their initial introduction in Texas. In April, Tesla also announced it was launching robotaxi services in Dallas and Houston.