Musk wants to know

Robot cab race: Is Tesla firing up the turbo?

Tech billionaire Elon Musk now wants to take off with driverless cabs. But the hurdles are high.(Bild: Tesla)

US electric car pioneer Tesla is injecting momentum into the race for driverless cabs: Elon Musk's car brand unveiled its robotaxi on Friday night. Tesla is late to the game; after all, other providers have been driving on US roads for years on a trial basis. However, the big breakthrough has yet to come. Is Tesla now igniting the decisive development turbo?

Enter the pick-up location and destination in the cell phone app, wait a moment - and the robotaxi drives up. It's been around in San Francisco for some time. Driverless cars are already driving around the Silicon Valley metropolis - mostly operated by tech or automotive companies. Waymo belongs to Google, Cruise to General Motors and Amazon is behind Zoox. Experiments are also already underway in Chinese cities: Chinese Google rival Baidu and start-up Pony.ai are testing their robot cabs in Guangzhou, among other places. However, what all the experiments to date have in common is that their robot cabs are still in the development phase and are not ready for the market. In the case of Cruise, the tests even had to be paused after accidents with passers-by. Given these difficulties, expectations of Tesla are particularly high. Krone+ analyzes the current state of autonomous robot cabs, how the technology works - and where Tesla may fail.