Tesla has started giving rides in driverless Model Y SUVs in Austin, a decade after CEO Elon Musk began making — and breaking — myriad promises about his company’s ability to launch such a service.
The rollout will become the first big test of Musk’s belief that it’s possible to safely deploy fully autonomous vehicles using just cameras and end-to-end AI – an approach that differs from other players in the space like Waymo.
On Sunday, numerous videos shared on social media as well as sources in the city, confirmed what Musk has been teasing for months: that the rides are finally happening, at a surely coincidental flat fee of $4.20 per ride.
Tesla sent early-access invitations in the past week to vetted customers, who were able to download and use the new robotaxi app on Sunday to hail rides. It’s unclear how many people have received this invitation. But posts on Musk’s social media platform X show that many of them went to Tesla’s loudest online supporters.
The invitations, along with a new robotaxi information page published on Tesla’s website on June 22, confirm the service will operate every day from 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m but “may be limited or unavailable in the event of inclement weather.” And, notably, a Tesla employee will be sitting in the right front passenger seat as a “safety monitor.”
The robotaxi information page also includes instructions on downloading the app, how to report a lost item, and general rules for riders. It still glosses over the kind of specifics that Waymo — the Alphabet-owned AV company that operates commercial robotaxis in Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Austin — has historically provided.
The robotaxi service will be small to start, according to Musk. The initial fleet will be about 10 or so 2025 Model Y SUVs operating in a narrowly defined area of South Austin. That’s in line with a first-hand account by Ed Niedermeyer, author of “Ludicrous, The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors,” who is in Austin to monitor the robotaxi rollout. (Niedermeyer is a co-host of The Autonocast with TechCrunch editor Kirsten Korosec.)
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Neidermeyer found what appears to be a Tesla robotaxi depot — a nondescript parking lot dotted with trees near Oltorf Street in South Austin. The day before the launch, he spotted several driverless Model Ys — always with an employee behind the steering wheel — entering and exiting the parking lot. Groups of other Tesla Model Y vehicles, most with manufacturer plates, were also parked there.
This morning, he spotted the branded Tesla Model Y robotaxis, this time with the employee in the front passenger seat, leaving the holding area. He observed one of the branded robotaxis, which had not yet picked up a rider, suddenly hitting its brakes two separate times — once in the middle of an intersection. It’s unclear why the vehicle behaved that way. However, in a video, which TechCrunch has viewed and has since been posted on YouTube, both instances occurred as the Tesla passed by police vehicles that were located in parking lots adjacent to the roadway.
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