Tesla Robotaxis to Begin Texas Operations Soon

Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, announced that the company will soon debut a fully autonomous ride-sharing service. The service will first be available in Austin, Texas with hopes to expand if the service proves to be successful. The service will use vehicles from the company’s internal fleet of vehicles, including the Tesla Model 3 and Model Ys. Missing from the fleet of vehicles for the program will be the Tesla Cybercabs, which were previously announced to begin production in 2026. In his year-end earnings call with investors, Musk said “We’re going to be launching unsupervised Full-Self Driving as a paid service in Austin in June.”

Tesla vehicles have been operating fully autonomously only in factory settings thus far.

The vehicles have been free to drive themselves around in the Tesla factory located in Fremont, California so far. This practice will soon be expanding to the Austin facility and then will hit the streets of Austin. According to reports, the goal is to take the service around the world eventually. For now, as long as Austin’s test runs go well, the company hopes to spread its robotaxi services to other major U.S. cities by the end of 2025. When their Cybertaxis are ready, they will join the fleet of robotaxis.

Many are surprised that Tesla is joining the robotaxi business late in the game.

One company, Waymo, has already been offering its autonomous taxi rides for a number of years in major cities in the United States. Largely, Waymos can be seen in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix. They have plans to expand soon. Because Tesla is known for its autonomous driving features, many are surprised they were not the first to offer fully autonomous rides.

Tesla has released statements claiming they plan to ease into the robotaxi service game in order to ensure their vehicles are ready.

They are prioritizing the safety of riders and pedestrians. “Our solution is a generalized AI solution,” says Musk. This differs from other companies, as companies like Waymo rely on high-precision maps of the area, something Musk says Tesla robotaxis will not need. If the testing phase in Austin is successful, it will make way for a large-scale debut of the unsupervised Full Self-Driving software that they company has been working on. So far, only supervised Full Self-Driving software is available. Musk hopes to expand this software to customer-purchased cars by next year as well. Furthermore, if they prove successful with each of these steps, they will begin utilizing the Tesla Network idea that would allow car owners to rent their vehicles for autonomous ride-hailing.