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April 5 (UPI) -- Elon Musk on Friday announced Tesla will unveil its Robotaxi later this summer. Musk, in a cryptic post to X, set Aug. 8 as the reveal date for the long-awaited Robotaxi, a consumer revenue-generating autonomous vehicle built on Tesla's next-generation vehicle platform.
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Market shares for Tesla jumped after he shared the post, rising 4% just before markets closed.
Musk has long speculated the possibility of Tesla owners being able to earn revenue from their self-driving vehicles by sending them to pick up and drop off passengers.
"You will also be able to add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you're at work or on vacation, significantly offsetting and at times potentially exceeding the monthly loan or lease cost," Musk wrote in his "master plan" in 2016.
In 2019, Musk promised a future with over a million Tesla cars on the road with "full self-driving hardware" was less than a year away.
Despite his grand vision, years have gone by without Tesla producing cars that can drive on their own.
Ostensibly Full Self-Driving capability comes standard with every new Tesla. The company's website, however, notes this feature requires active driver supervision and does not make the vehicle fully autonomous.
Musk, regardless, has said the system will one day make Teslas highly valuable.
"You can think of every car we sell or produce that has full autonomy capability as something that in the future may be worth five times what it is today," he said in the company's Q3 earnings call last year.
Critics said Musk's predictions are far off. Kelly Funkhouser, associate director of vehicle technology for Consumer Reports, recently tested the self-driving feature and described it as being driven by a novice teenager.
"You're not likely to tune out and become complacent or over-reliant on it," she said. "In fact, I would say you're potentially more alert."
Tesla last year issued a recall for 2 million vehicles after a defect was reported in the autopilot technology. The U.S. government is investigating the company's claims around self-driving technology.
Musk's company is not the only one to come under fire for overselling autonomous driving. Cruise, a GM subsidiary, paused testing after one of its vehicles hit and dragged a pedestrian. The Department of Justice is investigating the company over the incident.
Waymo, a subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet, recalled its product after two self-driving cars crashed into the same truck.
