- Tesla's first paid robotaxi service started last Sunday in Austin, Texas, but the small-scale launch had some issues.
- A handful of self-driving Model Ys provided the rides to pre-selected influencers; each robotaxi had an in-car safety monitor and other precautions.
- Some videos posted online appeared to show the robotaxis breaking traffic laws, which has led the NHTSA to contact Tesla for more information.
UPDATED 6/24/25: Tesla launched a small-scale robotaxi service this past Sunday in Austin, Texas, which aligns with the timeline that CEO Elon Musk announced earlier this year. The service reportedly only included a handful of driverless Tesla Model Ys, and each had someone in the front passenger seat to monitor things. The robotaxis, which operated in a small area of the city, also had people remotely monitoring them, and the passengers were pre-selected influencers, according to a report by Reuters. After videos posted online appeared to show instances of the self-driving SUVs breaking traffic laws, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has contacted Tesla for more information, which isn't uncommon, as reported by Bloomberg.
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Tesla plans to debut a fully autonomous ride-hailing service for the public in Austin, Texas, by the middle of this year. At least that's what CEO Elon Musk pledged Wednesday on a year-end earnings call with investors. "We're going to be launching unsupervised Full Self-Driving as a paid service in Austin in June," he said.
Free-Roaming Tesla Robotaxis
There were no specific details about pricing, but Tesla will use its internal fleet (i.e. the Model 3 and Model Y) for the initial robotaxis instead of the Cybercab, which was revealed last October but isn't expected to go into production until at least 2026. Tesla models have been operating autonomously at its factory in Fremont, California, and that will soon extend to its Austin facility and others around the world. The company also aims to expand its robotaxi service to other cities in the United States by the end of the year.
It's worth noting that Telsa won't be the first company to offer publicly available driverless taxis. Waymo has operated a driverless ride-hailing service (called Waymo One) for several years, which started in Phoenix, Arizona, and has expanded to include Los Angeles, San Francisco, and soon Austin, Atlanta, and Miami.
Tesla will ease into its robotaxi service to ensure everything is working properly and to prioritize the safety of riders and pedestrians. "Our solution is a generalized AI solution," said Musk. "It doesn't require high-precision maps of a locality, so we just want to be cautious."
If the plan comes to fruition, it will mark the debut of Tesla's unsupervised Full Self-Driving software; currently, only FSD (Supervised) is available. Musk said the unsupervised version could be available on customer cars as early as next year, opening the door for the Tesla Network that was proposed nearly a decade ago. The idea is to let owners rent out their personal vehicles as part of the ride-hailing fleet. Of course, the actual roll-out of this remains to be seen, as Tesla first needs to figure out billing and, more importantly, that the cars can safely drive themselves.
This story was originally published on January 31, 2025.
Eric Stafford’s automobile addiction began before he could walk, and it has fueled his passion to write news, reviews, and more for Car and Driver since 2016. His aspiration growing up was to become a millionaire with a Jay Leno–like car collection. Apparently, getting rich is harder than social-media influencers make it seem, so he avoided financial success entirely to become an automotive journalist and drive new cars for a living. After earning a journalism degree at Central Michigan University and working at a daily newspaper, the years of basically burning money on failed project cars and lemon-flavored jalopies finally paid off when Car and Driver hired him. His garage currently includes a 2010 Acura RDX, a manual '97 Chevy Camaro Z/28, and a '90 Honda CRX Si.
