Elon Musk says Tesla will unveil its robotaxi this year

• Tesla will reveal its robotaxi in August, CEO Elon Musk said.
• The EV-maker has long planned an autonomous car.
• This year, Tesla began to release its driver-assistance software more widely.

Elon Musk said Tesla will reveal its long-awaited robotaxi in August.

"Tesla Robotaxi unveil on 8/8," he said on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Friday afternoon.

An autonomous ride-hailing vehicle has been a linchpin of Tesla's valuation in recent years, as Musk pursues self-driving features to increase the value of the company's cars through software.

Shares of Tesla jumped more than 3% in after-hours trading following Musk's tweet.

In past interviews and analyst conference calls, Musk has touted Tesla's Full Self-Driving software as having the ability to make the cars grow in value. (Auto industry profit margins are notoriously thin, and new cars lose much of their value the minute they leave the dealer lot.)

However, FSD remained in beta testing until earlier this year, when Tesla began referring to it as FSD "supervised."

The software is currently classified as "level two" on an industry standard that ranges from one to six. That's because FSD still requires complete human supervision and is not fully autonomous.

Other companies have successfully released more advanced versions of autonomous vehicles, such as Alphabet's Waymo division and GM-backed Cruise.

Earlier on Friday, Reuters reported Tesla had canceled plans around a related project, a cheaper electric car, in order to put more resources behind the robotaxi. "Reuters is lying (again)," Musk wrote on X after the report.

It's unclear what pricing may look like for an eventual robotaxi and if it would be for sale to consumers or businesses. FSD currently costs $200 a month for owners whose cars have the right hardware to enable it.

In 2022, Musk theorized about a pedal-and-steering-wheel-less Tesla "fundamentally optimized for trying to achieve the lowest fully considered cost per mile, cost per kilometer, accounting everything."

"I think that that really will be a massive driver of Tesla's growth,'" he said, estimating 2024 as a production date.