After more than a decade of promises and hype, Tesla has activated its first robotaxi service, in Austin, close to the company’s headquarters.
Like Waymo when it first started, the new Tesla Robotaxis have a live person in the driver seat – in case. In this case, it’s a Tesla employee aboard the Model Y vehicles, ready to take the controls to steer or stop the car if the AI doesn’t work as programmed.
According to Austin TV station KVUE, rides are limited to 6 a.m. to midnight and operate within a restricted area of Downtown Austin, in order to avoid complex and difficult intersections, highways and the airport.
And they will not be available in bad weather, since rain can obscure some of its robo-cameras. Unlike the windshield, cameras do not have wipers.
The small fleet does not does not include the Cybercab – the futuristic car concept unveiled by Musk at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024 – which Musk says will be the company’s driverless taxi in the future.
Instead it was existing Tesla vehicles, with a small “robotaxi” logo on the side, that took to Austin streets.
According to the New York Times, several of the people invited to test the Robotaxis are Tesla enthusiasts with large presences on social media, including Herbert Ong, who posts about Tesla regularly on X, formerly Twitter, which is owned by Elon Musk, who also is the founder and CEO of Tesla.
Ong reported he had to walk several blocks to rendezvous with a Robotaxi after summoning it from a Tesla app.
There is also a Tesla-only blog, Teslarati.com, also reporting on the new Robotaxi service on X.
The Washington Post describes the roll-out as limited in scope and shrouded in secrecy and a crucial step for a company still struggling with the fallout from Musk’s foray into politics, including heading Trump’s cost cutting DOGE campaign.
For the start, there’s a $4.20 flat fee per ride – limited to a small group of users in Austin invited to try the self-driving cars
The Tesla robotaxis are using a new version of Tesla’s FSD (Full Self-Driving) Unsupervised software, which relies on eight external cameras attached around the vehicle.
That’s unlike Waymo’s robotaxis, which already operate in Austin and have multiple lidar sensors, six radars and 29 cameras that protrude off the vehicles.
Waymo is owned by Google parent Alphabet, and already offers self-driving taxi rides in Austin, as well as in San Francisco, California, and Phoenix, Arizona.
Meanwhile Uber, which recently announced it begin trials of driverless taxis in the UK, has partnered with Chinese firms Pony.AI, WeRide and Momenta to bring autonomous ride-hailing to more cities outside the US and China.
What are your thoughts on driverless taxis? Add your comment below.
ecoXplorer Evelyn Kanter is an award-winning journalist with 25+ years of experience as a newspaper and magazine writer, radio & TV news producer & reporter, and author of guidebooks and smartphone apps – all focusing on travel, automotive, the environment and your rights as a consumer.
ecoXplorer Evelyn Kanter is President Emeritus of the International Motor Press Assn. (IMPA).
ecoXplorer Evelyn Kanter also is a member of the North American Travel Journalists Assn. (NATJA) and the North American Snowsports Journalists Assn. (NASJA).
Contact me at evelyn@ecoxplorer.com.
Copyright (C) Evelyn Kanter
Thanks for following ecoXplorer.
What do you think? We value your comments and love hearing from you.