---
title: "Experts: Tesla’s Plans to Launch a Robotaxi Network Are Nonsense"
description: "Wall Street is not buying Elon Musk's assertion that Tesla will have a million autonomous robotaxis on the road by the end of 2020."
date: "2019-04-23"
modified: "2019-04-23"
authors:
  - name: "Kristin Houser"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/kristin"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/teslas-plans-robotaxis-network-nonsense"
categories:
  - "Advanced Transport"
  - "Tesla"
tags:
  - "Autonomous Cars"
  - "robotaxi"
  - "tesla"
  - "the digest"
---

# Experts: Tesla’s Plans to Launch a Robotaxi Network Are Nonsense

![Wall Street is not buying Elon Musk's assertion that Tesla will have a million autonomous robotaxis on the road by the end of 2020.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/teslas-plans-robotaxis-network-nonsense.png>)
*\<em\>Image: Tesla/Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

## Elon Being Elon

During Monday's "[Autonomy Investor Day](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-demo-full-self-driving>)," Elon Musk said he expects Tesla to have more than 1 million autonomous robotaxis on the road in 2020.

Wall Street's response: Yeah, right.

"The Tesla Network robotaxi plans seemed half baked," Cowen’s analyst Jeffrey Osborne wrote in a note to investors, according to a [*CNBC* report](<https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/23/wall-street-calls-teslas-autonomous-plan-half-baked.html>), "with the company appearing to either not have answers to or not even considered pretty basic question\[s\] on the pricing, insurance liability, or regulatory and legal requirements."

## Wishful Thinking

Musk has been floating the idea of [Tesla robotaxis](<https://futurism.com/ready-for-edit-7-ways-tesla-is-changing-everything>) for several years, arguing that the company's cars could one day serve the same purpose as Ubers or Lyfts, but without the need for a driver — just summon a Tesla from an app, and it'll drive itself to you.

The investors quoted in the *CNBC* piece don't seem to take issue with this plan directly — just Musk's recent assertions about its execution.

"Tesla’s autonomy investor presentations conveyed impressive technological leadership but, in our view, left big questions around time-to-market and did not change our views on the impediments to removing the human driver in a commercial service at scale," Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas told investors, per *CNBC*.

He later added, "We still think removing the safety driver will take many years (if not decades) to achieve at high scale."

**READ MORE:** [Wall Street calls Tesla’s autonomous plan ‘half-baked,’ doubts it can beat Lyft, Nvidia and Google](<https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/23/wall-street-calls-teslas-autonomous-plan-half-baked.html>) \[*CNBC*\]

**More on Tesla:** *[Tesla Will Demonstrate Full Self-Driving Capabilities This Month](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-demo-full-self-driving>)*

### Author social links  
[LinkedIn](<https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinjhouser>)