A vehicle Tesla is using for robotaxi testing purposes on Oltorf Street in Austin, Texas, US, on Sunday, June 22, 2025. The launch of Tesla Inc.'s driverless taxi service Sunday is set to begin modestly, with a handful of vehicles in limited areas of the city. Photographer: Tim Goessman/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Nearly six months after launching a limited Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas with safety drivers in the car, the company says it's testing driverless vehicles in the city without humans on board.
"Testing is underway with no occupants in the car," CEO Elon Musk wrote in a post on his social network X over the weekend.
Shares of Tesla rose 3.5% to $475.11 at the close of trading on Monday. The stock is now up 18% for the year, and is about 1% off its record reached in December 2024.
For more than a decade, Musk has been promising Tesla investors and customers that the company's electric vehicles will soon be upgradable to self-driving cars, capable of serving as unmanned robotaxis, or of completing a cross-country trip without any human intervention.
While that still hasn't happened, the company unveiled a Robotaxi-branded ridehail app and service in Austin in June, and a separate car service in the San Francisco Bay Area soon after.
On Sunday, Tesla's official account wrote in a pair of posts on X, "The fleet will wake up via over-the-air software update," and "Slowly then all at once."
"And so it begins!" wrote Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla's vice president of AI software, in a post on X, in response to a video that had been posted by someone else of what appeared to be driverless vehicle in Austin.
Tesla hasn't said when it will be able to operate a ride-hailing service without human safety supervisors or drivers on board. But it may have still have a long way to go.