In the wave of the integration of technology and automobiles, Tesla has always been the focus of attention. On April 23, 2025, after Tesla released its financial report for the first quarter of 2025, CEO Elon Musk once again threw out heavy remarks in the conference call, saying that Tesla's autonomous driving will start to contribute profits to the company next year, and millions of Tesla robotaxi will be put into operation in the second half of next year. As soon as this statement came out, the industry was in an uproar, which not only raised expectations for Tesla's technical strength and market prospects, but also raised questions about its past unfulfilled promises.
ⅠThe current status and advantages of Tesla's self-driving technology
Tesla has indeed made a series of remarkable technological achievements in the field of autonomous driving. Its latest version of FSD V13, based on a full-vision solution, uses an ISP based on the HW4.0 platform to provide better image quality at higher resolution and 36 frames per second, resulting in improved recognition accuracy. This technical route, which relies on visual perception, end-to-end neural networks, and efficient computing architectures, has significant advantages in terms of cost and universality.
Judging from the data, Tesla's self-driving technology has also made significant progress in safety. Musk said that Tesla's self-driving performance has been able to significantly surpass the performance of ordinary human drivers, and the goal is to continue to reduce the probability of accidents caused by automatic driving, making it much lower than the level of experienced drivers.
In addition, Tesla also has a strong competitiveness in terms of hardware. Its new model is equipped with AI4 chips, which have 5 times more computing power, providing strong hardware support for autonomous driving.
Picture: Elon Musk: Autonomous driving will be profitable next year, and millions of robot taxis will be on the job?!
Ⅱ Practical challenges and doubts
Despite technological advances, Tesla's self-driving approach to profitability at scale and millions of robotaxis on the road still faces a number of real-world challenges.
First of all, from the perspective of technical reliability and safety, although Tesla has made technological breakthroughs in certain regions and under certain conditions, there are still many challenges to achieve fully reliable unsupervised and fully autonomous driving. For example, in the face of special situations such as road construction, sudden obstacles, bad weather, etc., the system may have difficulty or mistakes in decision-making, which will affect driving safety.
Second, regulatory and approval restrictions are also a major obstacle. The commercial operation of autonomous driving technology is subject to strict regulatory and approval restrictions, and governments around the world have extremely high requirements for the safety and reliability of autonomous vehicles. Tesla needs to meet the corresponding regulatory requirements in different countries and regions before it can legally carry out commercial operations such as robo-taxis, which undoubtedly increases the difficulty and time cost of its business promotion.
Moreover, the pressure of market competition should not be underestimated. Competition in the field of autonomous driving is fierce, not only with the active layout of traditional car manufacturers, but also with the influx of many technology companies. Waymo, for example, has invested heavily in R&D and testing of its self-driving technology, and its modular technology roadmap competes with Tesla's end-to-end roadmap.
Finally, the balance between costs and profitability is also a key issue. To achieve the operation of millions of robotaxis on the road, a huge amount of money needs to be invested in vehicle manufacturing, technology research and development, operation and maintenance, etc. Tesla needs to effectively control costs on the premise of ensuring service quality and technical reliability to achieve the goal of profitability. However, the current cost of autonomous driving technology is still high, including the cost of sensors, chips, software research and development, and the construction of operating platforms, which may hinder Tesla's profit plan.
Ⅲ Impact and enlightenment on the industry
Musk's rhetoric and Tesla's continuous exploration in the field of autonomous driving have had an important impact on the entire industry.
On the one hand, Tesla has pushed the industry forward. Its technological innovation has set a high development goal and direction for the entire industry, and encouraged other enterprises to increase R&D investment and accelerate the pace of technological innovation. For example, other car companies and technology companies may pay more attention to research in areas such as end-to-end technology, visual perception, neural networks, etc., to close the technology gap with Tesla.
On the other hand, Tesla has promoted industrial cooperation and integration. The development of autonomous driving involves many fields such as automobile manufacturing, electronic technology, artificial intelligence, and communications, and Tesla's active layout and market performance have attracted the attention and participation of many upstream and downstream enterprises, and promoted the cooperation and integration between all links of the industrial chain.
In addition, Musk's remarks and Tesla's development model have also triggered in-depth thinking and debate in the industry on the technical route, business model, and safety standards of autonomous driving.
Ⅳ Conclusion
Musk's claim that Tesla's self-driving profits next year and millions of robo-taxis on the road not only reflect his confidence in the company's technical strength and market prospects, but also face many practical challenges and difficulties. Tesla's technological progress and innovative practices in the field of autonomous driving have had an important impact on the entire industry, promoting the development of technology and the transformation of the industry. However, to turn this grand blueprint into reality, Tesla still needs to make great efforts in technology research and development, safety verification, cost control, regulatory compliance, etc., and deal with many challenges from market competition. In the future, the development of the autonomous driving industry will continue to attract global attention, and Tesla's performance will also provide important reference and inspiration for the development of the industry.
