Tesla postpones Robotaxi event, a setback to Musk's autonomous vehicle campaign

Tesla Inc is pushing back its previously scheduled Robotaxi unveil event to October so working teams can get more time to build additional prototypes, the media reported, citing people familiar with this decision. The internal notification for this delay of about two months has been told. Those who gave information requested not to reveal their identity. It's confidential since the company has not announced this information to the public. This week, the design team asked that some elements of the car be reworked.

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk pinned that date, August 8, months ago. Optimism about the spectacle has helped support an 11-day streak of gains that added more than $257 billion to Tesla's market capitalization. The stock closed 8.4 percent lower on Thursday, its biggest drop since January.

Musk did not return requests for comment.

Shares of potential taxi rivals Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. moved sharply higher on the news. Uber's stock rose 6.1 percent Thursday, as shares of Lyft jumped 4.6 percent. An idea like Tesla offering an autonomous taxi service has swirled for years, at least since Musk wrote a second "master plan" for the company in 2016. It's a project the CEO has prioritized over the last few months rather than working on an electric vehicle that is cheaper than Tesla's most affordable car, the Model 3 sedan.

Musk has mentioned Tesla's autonomous vehicle technology research and development for over a decade already. And has billed customers thousands of dollars for it. For which the business has brought numerous features to market, collectively called Full Self-Driving, or FSD. The name is a misnomer — FSD requires constant attentiveness and does not make a Tesla autonomous. But Musk and the company's top engineers have been very bullish on FSD in recent months, as sales of the company's vehicles have slowed. Tesla delivered 6.6 percent fewer cars in the first half as a whole despite the company's addition of a new model—Cybertruck—to its lineup. Production at the automaker fell 14 percent in the second quarter compared with a year ago to help cut inventory that ballooned.