Tesla Is Finally Letting Robotaxis Drive Solo In Austin. Now Comes The Hard Part

• Tesla is testing its Model Y robotaxis in Austin, Texas, without human safety drivers inside.
• Elon Musk said this month that truly driverless robotaxis in Austin were just “three weeks away.”
• Broader rollout for passengers is on the horizon, but the exact date remains unclear.

Tesla has begun testing its Model Y robotaxis in Austin without a human safety monitor on board. The robotaxis available for paying passengers still have human supervisors on board. Still, it’s a crucial step forward for the automaker that’s betting its future on autonomous vehicles, AI and humanoid robots.

On Elon Musk’s social media platform X, a Tesla fan going by the handle name of Mandablorian first posted the video of a black Model Y cruising along smoothly on Austin’s roads without any passengers inside. The clip seems to have gone viral among Tesla’s cheerleaders on X, with Musk later confirming that robotaxi testing was underway with no occupants. 

The robotaxis are guided by Tesla’s Full-Self Driving (FSD) software, which is also available on the cars it sells to buyers. But so far, the rollout has been limited to Austin and San Francisco, with human supervisors on board monitoring the vehicles, with plans to expand to more cities next year.

Now, as the company plans to gradually remove the human drivers from the equation, it will be a real test of the underlying FSD software, which has so far been far from perfect. The Model Ys autonomously brake, turn, accelerate and navigate complex traffic scenarios with confidence in most cases.

But there have been instances of them flouting traffic rules, as evidenced by several passenger-recorded videos online. Since the human-supervised robotaxis rolled in Austin early this year, Tesla also reported seven crash incidents to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Tesla FSD

Meanwhile, rival Waymo is expanding rapidly. The Alphabet-owned robotaxi service is now clocking 450,000 weekly driverless rides across Austin, Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Atlanta. That’s an 80% increase from 250,000 rides the company disclosed six months ago. It plans to expand to 11 more U.S. cities by the end of 2026.

Waymo’s safety record is not perfect either. Most recently, three of its Jaguar I-Paces were stuck blocking each other after two of them made contact in San Francisco.

In a video conference during his company xAI’s hackathon event last week, Musk said that robotaxis without human safety drivers would arrive in Austin in about three weeks. “Unsupervised (Full-Self Driving) is pretty much solved at this point, we’re just going through validation right now,” he added. I’d take that with a grain of salt—Musk himself has previously said that he tends to be overoptimistic with timelines. 

Still, this year was big for robotaxis. Tesla is finally starting to deliver on what it has promised for over a decade, even if its operations are still relatively small. Waymo grew rapidly and many new players joined the race to develop autonomous technology for private vehicles and taxis, all with the ultimate goal of making our roads safer.

Next year is poised to be even bigger and could decide whether self-driving vehicles are just a very expensive science project or something that could truly scale and drive profits for these companies, while also delivering safe and affordable rides for passengers. 

Have a tip? Contact the author: suvrat.kothari@insideevs.com