Tesla CEO Elon Musk showcased on Thursday a long-awaited robotaxi with two gull-wing doors and no steering wheel or pedals and surprised with robovan, betting on a shift in focus from low-priced mass-market cars to robotic vehicles.

At a glitzy unveiling, Musk reached the stage in a "Cybercab" to be produced from 2026 - eventually in high volume - and priced under $30,000. He then introduced the robovan which can carry up to 20 people though offered few further details, Reuters reported.

But Musk, who has a record of missing projections - and himself said he tended to be optimistic with time frames - did not say how quickly Tesla could ramp up robotaxi production, clear inevitable regulatory hurdles or implement a business plan to leapfrog robotaxi rivals such as Alphabet's Waymo.

Analysts and industry experts said establishing robotaxis could take years, particularly due to ensuring safety and reliability. They pointed to accidents as well as the difficulty the technology has responding to scenarios such as inclement weather, complex intersections and pedestrian behavior.

But Musk, wearing a leather-jacket and addressing crowds at the Warner Bros studio near Los Angeles, said autonomous cars could be 10 times safer than humans and drive five to 10 times longer.

"The autonomous future is here," Musk said. "With autonomy, you get your time back."

Musk had previously said he planned to operate a fleet of self-driving Tesla taxis that passengers can hail through an app. Individual Tesla owners would also be able to make money on the app by listing their vehicles as robotaxis, he had said. He made no mention of the app at Thursday's event.

The event - titled "We, Robot" in an apparent nod to the "I, Robot" science-fiction short stories by American writer Isaac Asimov - echoed Musk's comment that Tesla "should be thought of as an AI robotics company" rather than an automaker.

It started after a delay of nearly an hour which Musk attributed to a medical emergency involving an attendee. The presentation, months in the making, lasted for less than half an hour and was watched by about four million people on Musk's X social media platform alone.

"I'm a shareholder and pretty disappointed. I think the market wanted more definitive time lines," said equity trader Dennis Dick at Triple D Trading. "I don't think he said much about anything."

Running the Cybercab will cost 20 cents a mile over time and charging will be inductive, requiring no plugs, Musk said. Operating the robovans will be even cheaper - at 5 cents a mile.

The vehicles will rely on artificial intelligence and cameras rather than hardware common among robotaxi rivals, he said, such as lidar - an approach experts have flagged as challenging both from a technical and regulatory stand point.

Beyond vehicles, Musk touted "a lot of progress" made with its humanoid robot "Optimus" that could eventually be priced at $20,000 to $30,000 and which can perform many daily tasks.

TOUGH TO CRACK

Musk said in 2019 he was "very confident" Tesla would have operational robotaxis by 2020. This year, he diverted focus to the Cybercab and scrapped plans to build a smaller, cheaper car widely seen as essential to countering slowing EV demand.

Tesla is at risk of posting its first-ever decline in deliveries this year as buying incentives have failed to attract enough customers to its aging EV lineup, showed Reuters calculations based on third-quarter earnings. Price cuts meant to offset high interest rates have also squeezed profit margins.

Several companies attempting to crack the robotaxi market have suffered billion of dollars in loss, forcing some to shut shop.

Alphabet's Waymo, with about 700 Jaguar Land Rover cars in its fleet, is the only U.S. firm operating uncrewed robotaxis that collect fares.

Amazon's Zoox is testing purpose-built vehicles that resemble toaster ovens on wheels and lack manual controls. General Motors' Cruise, which uses the Chevrolet Bolt EV, this year indefinitely suspended plans to develop its self-driving "Origin" without controls.

Tesla's approach to full self-driving technology, in its current iteration, requires constant driver attention but keep costs down. It has, however, faced legal scrutiny with at least two fatal accidents involving the technology.

"We do expect to start fully autonomous unsupervised FSD in Texas and California next year." Musk said. "That's with the Model 3 and Model Y."

He did not say whether the Cybercab uses FSD or new technology.

"Musk did a fantastic job of painting an ideal future for transportation that promises to both free up our time and increase safety," said Jessica Caldwell, head of at car research and buying website Edmunds. "But many questions remain about how this will be achieved from a practical standpoint."

Barnard's star is a red dwarf, the smallest type of regular star and much smaller and less luminous than our sun. At about 6 light years away, it is the closest single star - one not orbiting with other stars - to our solar system. It is, in cosmic terms, in our neighborhood.

Because of this, scientists eager to study nearby potentially habitable worlds are excited by the discovery of the first confirmed planet orbiting Barnard's star, a rocky one with a mass about 40% that of Earth, Reuters reported.

While this planet, orbiting very close to Barnard's star, has a surface temperature too high to be suitable for life, the researchers found what they called "strong hints" of three other planets around Barnard's star that might be better candidates.

The confirmed planet, called Barnard b, has a predicted diameter about three-quarters that of Earth, so about 6,000 miles (9,700 km).

"It is one of the least massive planets ever found," beyond our solar system, said astronomer Jonay González Hernández of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Tenerife, Spain, lead author of the study published this week in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, opens new tab.

Among planets in our solar system, only Mars and Mercury are smaller.

Barnard b, with a surface temperature around 275 degrees Fahrenheit (125 degrees Celsius), orbits Barnard's star in just three Earth days at a distance 20 times closer than our solar system's innermost planet Mercury is to the sun.

Planets beyond the solar system are called exoplanets. Scientists searching for exoplanets that possibly could harbor life look at those residing in the "habitable zone" around a star, where it is not too hot and not too cold, and liquid water can exist on the planetary surface.

The researchers used an instrument called ESPRESSO on the European Southern Observatory's Chile-based Very Large Telescope to detect this planet. The three other potential planets orbiting Barnard's star all apparently are rocky and smaller than Earth, ranging from 20-30% of Earth's mass. The hope is that at least one of these may be in the vicinity of the habitable zone.

If confirmed, this would be the only known star with a multi-planet system entirely comprised of planets smaller than Earth.

Barnard's star, in the constellation Ophiuchus, has a mass about 16% of the sun's, a diameter 19% of it and is far less hot. It also is estimated to be more than twice as old as the sun.

"Being so cold and small, it is quite faint, making its habitable zone much closer to the star than in the case of the sun," said Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias astronomer and study co-author Alejandro Suárez Mascareño. "It also is a very quiet star. While some red dwarfs have been found to flare very frequently, Barnard's star doesn't do it."

The closer that exoplanets are to us, the easier they are to study. It is easier to detect low-mass rocky planets orbiting red dwarfs, the most common type of star in our Milky Way galaxy, than around larger stars.

Only the three stars in the Alpha Centauri system, about 4 light-years away, are closer to our solar system than Barnard's star. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). Two exoplanets have been detected in the Alpha Centauri system, both orbiting the red dwarf Proxima Centauri. One has a mass about equal to Earth's. The other is about 25% Earth's mass.

In science fiction, light speed travel is commonplace. In reality, it is far beyond human capabilities, though research projects such as Breakthrough Starshot are exploring the feasibility of interstellar travel. Barnard's star and Alpha Centauri might be on wish lists of future destinations.

"While they are very close in astronomical terms, they are out of reach for any kind of human technology. However, if projects such as the Breakthrough Starshot are successful, it is likely that these will be some of the first targets," Mascareño said.

SpaceX plans to launch about five uncrewed Starship missions to Mars in two years, CEO Elon Musk said on Sunday in a post on social media platform X.

Earlier this month, Musk had said that the first Starships to Mars would launch in two years "when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens."

The CEO on Sunday said that the first crewed mission timeline will depend upon the success of the uncrewed flights. If the uncrewed missions land safely, crewed missions will be launched in four years. However, in case of challenges, crewed missions will be postponed by another two years, Musk said.

Musk, known for providing changing timelines on Starship's readiness, said earlier this year that the first uncrewed starship to land on Mars would be within five years, with the first people landing on Mars within seven years, Reuters reported.

In June, a Starship rocket survived a fiery, hypersonic return from space and achieved a breakthrough landing demonstration in the Indian Ocean, completing a full test mission around the globe on the rocket's fourth try.

Musk is counting on Starship to fulfill his goal of producing a large, multipurpose next-generation spacecraft capable of sending people and cargo to the moon later this decade, and ultimately flying to Mars.

NASA earlier this year delayed Artemis 3 mission and its first crewed moon landing in half a century using SpaceX's Starship, to September 2026. It was previously planned for late 2025, NASA said.

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa in June canceled a private mission around the moon he had paid for, which was to have used SpaceX's Starship, citing schedule uncertainties in the rocket's development, read the report.