After nearly a decade of waiting, Tesla has launched a limited self-driving car service in the Austin, Texas, area. Company executives, including Musk, have said the autonomous vehicle technology debuting today is critical to Tesla’s future.
The limited service, which for now is open only to early users invited by Tesla, includes some 20 2025 Model Y sedans available for rides through a Tesla-made app between 6 a.m and midnight. Terms of service posted on X by invited riders indicate that the service will be paused or limited for bad weather. Rides during this invite-only phase are available for a flat $4.20 fee, Musk posted on X Sunday.
People who scored one of the limited invitations—several of whom traveled to Texas this weekend to participate in the launch—were able to start taking rides around 2 pm local time on Sunday.
The company has said that its purpose-built Cybercab will go into production next year; for now, Model Ys will be the only Teslas driving autonomously as part of the program.
According to screenshots posted on X, the service appears to pick up and drop off in an area of Austin limited to part of the south side of the city, just across the Colorado River from downtown. The service area appears to include the bustling thoroughfares of South Congress Avenue and South Lamar Boulevard. The service cannot go to the local airport, Austin-Bergstrom International, which is about five miles from downtown. Those invited to try the service can bring one guest on the ride, as long as they are 18 or older.
In an email to invitees posted on X this week, Tesla said that a company employee would sit in the front passenger seat of each robotaxi. Launching an autonomous-vehicle service with a “safety driver” is not unusual. Alphabet subsidiary Waymo launched its service with a safety driver in 2018, as did General Motors’ Cruise in 2020. The Michigan company May Mobility says it will do the same when it starts service in Atlanta this year. But a Tesla safety monitor in the passenger seat—not the driver’s seat—likely won’t be able to grab the steering wheel or hit the brakes in the case of a road incident.
Tesla’s robotaxi service will also likely be augmented by teleoperators: drivers who can, when needed, advise or perhaps even pilot the car remotely to get it around an unorthodox obstacle or out of a sticky situation.
Musk has been promising Tesla robotaxi technology since October 2016, when he told investors every vehicle his company produced from then on had all the hardware needed to become self-driving. That wasn’t true; Tesla has since updated the hardware on its vehicles. In 2019, Musk said Tesla would have 1 million robotaxis on the road by the next year. (It didn’t.)
Musk said earlier this year that the company will have hundreds of thousands of robotaxis on public roads next year.