About six months after Tesla began testing its early Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, the company is now allowing those cars to drive through the city without a human safety monitor onboard. This move marks a critical step toward Tesla’s goal of launching a true commercial Robotaxi service, a milestone years in the making.
For nearly a decade, CEO Elon Musk has promised that Tesla’s cars were just a software update away from full autonomy. Now, he stands on the precipice of launching a service intended to compete with Waymo, the Alphabet-owned company he recently claimed “never really had a chance against Tesla.”
The removal of safety monitors will likely intensify scrutiny of Tesla’s ongoing testing in Austin, especially once the company begins offering rides in these empty vehicles. Since June, Tesla’s small test fleet has been involved in at least seven crashes. Few details about these accidents are publicly known, as the company aggressively redacts its reports to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Video of a completely empty Tesla Model Y SUV circulated on social media over the weekend. On Sunday, Musk confirmed his company was testing vehicles “with no occupants.” Neither Musk nor Tesla has shared a timeline for offering customer rides without a safety monitor. However, the company’s own social media account hinted at the pace with a post stating, “Slowly, then all at once.” Tesla’s head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, added, “And so it begins!”
Tesla first offered rides in Austin to selected influencers and customers in June, with an employee in the passenger seat ready to take control if needed. Those safety monitors moved to the driver’s seat in September. The company has since removed the waitlist and gradually expanded its service area to cover much of the greater Austin metropolitan region. Despite this expansion, the fleet size has reportedly never grown beyond approximately 25 to 30 cars, according to most fan estimates.
Musk has stated that Tesla will operate its own fleet of Robotaxis. In July, he claimed this fleet would cover “half of the population of the U.S.” by the end of this year. That ambitious target, like many of Musk’s past goals, has since been scaled back. In November, he revised the goal, stating Tesla would roughly double its existing Austin fleet to around 60 vehicles.
Tesla has also been testing a ride-hail service in the San Francisco area for the past few months, where drivers use the company’s advanced driver-assistance software. California regulations would require Tesla to combine multiple permits to offer fully driverless rides in the state, while Texas has no such rules.
Over the years, Musk has frequently discussed allowing Tesla owners to add their personal cars to a Robotaxi network. In 2016, he promised that every Tesla produced had all the necessary hardware to eventually become autonomous. That claim was incorrect, and the related blog post has been removed from Tesla’s website. The company now faces several legal challenges over it. Tesla has gone through multiple hardware iterations for its driver-assistance software, meaning millions of cars on the road will require upgrades, as Musk himself acknowledged in January.