A blurry photo of a heavily camouflaged vehicle tooling around on the Warner Bros. movie studio lot surfaced last night, spurring speculation that it’s the fabled Tesla robotaxi set to be revealed next month.
With its canary yellow wrap and clearly manipulated shape, it’s difficult to glean much about the robotaxi from just this sighting. Everything about this photo should be taken with a grain of salt, including the tires, boxy rear end, weird roof bump (lidar?), and upsetting hood indentions. All is not what it seems.
According to Electrek, the photo was first posted to Reddit by u/boopitysmopp, who is said to be a lot employee at Warner Bros. (The post has since been removed, and the Reddit user has deleted their profile, so the employment claim could not be immediately verified.) In the photo, another Tesla vehicle can be seen following along behind.
Last month, Bloomberg reported that Tesla was planning on staging its robotaxi reveal at the 110-acre lot, which contains over two dozen sound stages, including fake suburban towns.
Screenshot: u/boopitysmopp, via @MatthewDR
The yellow camouflage wrap is certainly a nice touch, especially if Tesla is going to keep using the “cybercab” nomenclature that Elon Musk first mentioned in a recent earnings call. After all, nothing says “taxicab” like an obnoxious shade of yellow.
The overall size of the vehicle looks small but possibly in line with a Tesla Model 3. And the original Reddit post noted that the backend had a full-width taillight that appeared to be modeled on the Cybertruck.
Other important questions, like whether the vehicle will have traditional controls like a steering wheel and pedals, cannot immediately be answered by this one photo. Hopefully, some more spy shots will surface soon so we can have a better sense of what Musk and company are planning.
(Originally posted by Andrew J. Hawkins)