Tesla’s Self-Driving ‘Robotaxi’ to Enter the Spotlight

Tesla on Thursday plans to unveil a product that Elon Musk, the company’s chief executive, has said will add trillions of dollars to its stock market value and fuel its growth.

The product is a prototype of a self-driving taxi. And it will be shown at an invitation-only, evening event at the Warner Bros. studio in Los Angeles. Mr. Musk has promised that the cab, which he calls the Robotaxi, will be able to ferry passengers to any destination without human intervention, a feat that other companies have achieved in just a few places like Phoenix and San Francisco.

Mr. Musk’s supporters and fans believe that the Robotaxi will open a lucrative line of business that will more than make up for Tesla’s recent struggles in the electric car market, where it has lost market share to more established carmakers. Mr. Musk has said people will be able to purchase Robotaxis for personal use and earn extra money by allowing the vehicles to ferry passengers, the automotive equivalent of listing a home on Airbnb.

“An autonomous taxi platform will unlock a multitrillion-dollar market,” Tasha Keeney, director of investment analysis at ARK Invest, an asset management firm that owns shares in Tesla, said in a statement.

But other analysts and autonomous driving experts are skeptical that Tesla can perfect the technology and make a profit from it anytime soon.

A car capable of functioning as a self-driving taxi “is still several years away, and numerous technological hurdles, safety tests and regulatory approvals are still standing in the way,” Garrett Nelson, senior equity analyst at CFRA Research, said in a note this week.