Tesla’s robo-taxi service has begun driverless testing in Austin ahead of its promised June launch, the company said. “Over the past few days, Tesla has been testing self-driving Model Y vehicles (without a driver) on public streets in Austin without incident,” CEO Elon Musk wrote on X. “A month ahead of schedule.”
Earlier this year, Tesla promised to launch its robo-taxi service sometime in June, using an internal fleet of 10-20 Model Ys operating in a limited, geo-fenced area of Austin with remote human assistance. The level of human assistance (teleoperation) is unclear, but there are concerns, based on Tesla’s recent history, that human operators could be used to cover up any technical flaws in Tesla’s self-driving cars.
A recent Bloomberg report was more specific about the launch date with paying customers, putting it at June 12. However, reports earlier this month indicated that Tesla had not even begun driverless testing as of mid-May, so it would only have a few weeks of testing before commercial launch.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also still doesn’t know many details about the service. “The agency would like to gather additional information about Tesla’s development of technologies for use in ‘robot taxi’ vehicles to understand how Tesla plans to evaluate its vehicles and automated driving technologies for use on public roads,” NHTSA wrote in a letter to Tesla dated May 8.
This information is key to public safety, as Tesla will only use camera-based systems, rather than LiDAR and radar sensors like Waymo and other robo-taxi operators. In a recent call with analysts, Elon Musk said that the Model Y robo-taxi will be the same as the Model Y cars sold to the public. “There’s no change to that,” Musk said (before Tesla’s Autopilot software director contradicted him).
No other details were released, but the upcoming service is certainly critical for the automaker given the decline in Tesla electric vehicle sales, especially in Europe. CEO Elon Musk has famously bet Tesla’s future on robo-taxi, reportedly even canceling a budget electric car to focus on the service.
