- Elon Musk announced plans for Tesla to launch a paid robotaxi service in Austin this summer.
- Musk said expanding the service to allow Tesla owners to rent out their own vehicles is expected next year.
- Musk said he expects the robotaxi service to be available in additional US cities by the end of the year.
Tesla’s robotaxi service is only months away, according to Elon Musk.
The Tesla CEO said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday that a paid robotaxi service “isn’t some far-off mythical situation,” and it’s launching this summer in Austin.
“Teslas will be in the wild with no one in them in June in Austin,” Musk said.
Musk said the EV giant already has thousands of Teslas “operating autonomously” with unsupervised full-self-driving (FSD) at its factory in Fremont, California. He added the company will soon expand the tests to Tesla’s other factories around the world.
Musk said he’s “very confident” Tesla will release unsupervised FSD in several other US cities by the end of 2025, and “probably everywhere” in North America next year.
While Musk didn’t specify exactly which models Tesla would use in its robotaxi fleet, the company did show off its ride-hailing service with its in-development Cybercab during an event last year. The Cybercab is expected to begin volume production in 2026.
In a video showcasing the service, people can be seen ordering a ride in an Uber-like app.
“We just want to put our toe in the water, make sure everything is OK, then put a few more toes in the water, then put a foot in the water,” Musk said. “With safety of the general public and those in the car as our top priority.”
Musk said Tesla is targeting “a safety level that is significantly above the average human driver.”
“The standard has to be very high because at the moment, if there’s any kind of accident with an autonomous car, that immediately gets worldwide headlines,” Musk said, adding that “if somebody scrapes a shin with an autonomous car, it’s headline news.”
There have been some prominent examples over the years of accidents involving autonomous vehicles.
Uber, before it sold off its self-driving division, was involved in a fatal accident in 2018 involving one of its test vehicles that had a safety driver behind the wheel. The Uber test driver later pleaded guilty to endangerment. More recently, GM’s Cruise generated headlines in 2023 after one of its autonomous vehicles dragged a pedestrian beneath the vehicle. GM later said it would halt its robotaxi development.
Waymo, which currently offers paid rides in multiple markets, including San Francisco and LA, issued a software update last year after two of its robotaxis collided with the same pickup truck being towed within minutes. No passengers were in the Waymos at the time.
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Tesla’s fourth-quarter vehicle report stated it recorded one crash for every 5.94 million miles driven with Autopilot, a more limited set of driver-assistance features, compared to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Federal Highway Administration data from 2023 that indicated one crash for every 702,000 miles approximately in the US.
Musk, who has said he can be optimistic about timelines, said Tesla will “hopefully” have unsupervised FSD in most countries by the end of 2026 — however, he added that regulations could impact timing.
Musk estimated that unsupervised FSD could “maybe” be allowed in Europe in May of next year. However, he added that “Europe is a layer cake of regulations of bureaucracy” and the company would have to go through a “mountain of paperwork” to release unsupervised FSD in the Netherlands, which is its “primary regulatory authority. “
In China, Musk said there were challenges with unsupervised FSD because the US isn’t allowing Tesla to train its systems in the country. Musk said the company was instead looking at videos of streets in China from the internet to train its systems to understand the local street signs and traffic rules, including bus lanes.
Tesla will operate its own robotaxi fleet to start
A core part of Musk’s autonomous ride-hailing vision includes Tesla owners renting out their vehicles as taxis when they aren’t using them, which he’s said could earn them up to $30,000 a year.
However, Musk said Wednesday that an Airbnb-like service in which owners can “add or subtract their car from the fleet” likely won’t be available until next year. Musk added that Tesla wants to ensure it has “ironed out any kinks” before expanding it to include personal vehicles.
“It’s just a bunch of work that needs to be done to make sure the whole thing works,” Musk said. “Especially that people can order the car, it comes to the right spot, does exactly the right thing, all the payment systems work, the billing works.”
While Musk again acknowledged he can be optimistic, he said he thinks his predictions on timelines “are going to be pretty accurate.”
“Sure, I’m optimistic,” Musk said. “But I’m not that optimistic.”
