Beijing, July 13 (Xinhua) -- According to Bloomberg News on the 11th, Tesla has postponed the release of its autonomous taxi to October this year, in order to give the team more time to build more prototype cars.
Bloomberg, citing informed sources, reported that Tesla has internally announced a delay in the release of its self driving taxis. Tesla's design team was informed this week that certain parts of its self driving taxis need to be redone.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced several months ago that he will release autonomous taxis on August 8th. The optimistic sentiment triggered by this event pushed Tesla's stock price up for 11 consecutive trading days, resulting in a market value increase of over $257 billion.
After the news of the delayed release of autonomous taxis was announced, Tesla's stock price fell 8.4% on the 11th, closing at $241.03 per share, the largest daily decline since January this year. Meanwhile, Tesla's potential competitors in the taxi industry, Uber Technologies and Lyft, saw their stock prices rise by 6.1% and 4.6% respectively.
Bryant Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, told Reuters: "We don't see any sign that Tesla... is actually deploying the kind of auto drive system that it has continuously promised as planned."
To cope with the decline in Tesla's electric vehicle sales, Musk is currently focusing on the research and development of artificial intelligence, autonomous driving software and hardware, and humanoid robot technology. According to data, electric vehicles contribute over 80% of Tesla's quarterly revenue.
Musk said in the first quarter earnings conference call held in April this year that Tesla will introduce new models early next year, which will utilize existing platforms and production lines. At that time, Musk outlined the blueprint for diversified Tesla business in the teleconference, expanding the business into the fields of artificial intelligence, humanoid robots and autonomous vehicle.
According to Bloomberg's report in April, Musk once intended for the company to lay off 20% of its workforce. Tesla's car delivery volume in the first quarter of this year decreased by 20.1% month on month to less than 387000 vehicles. On the 2nd of this month, the Associated Press reported that Tesla announced its global car sales for the second quarter, which fell 4.8% from the same period last year to nearly 444000 units, but exceeded analysts' expectations.