A Tesla robot taxi rides down the street along South Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas, June 22, 2025.
Joel Angel Juarez | Reuters
tesla CEO Elon Musk said Thursday that the company currently operates a small fleet of robotaxis in Austin, Texas, without human drivers or safety supervisors.
“Tesla robotaxis just started operating in Austin and there were no safety monitors in the cars,” Musk wrote on X, adding, “Congratulations to the @Tesla_AI team!”
In a separate post, Ashok Elswamy, Tesla’s vice president of software, wrote that the Austin robotaxi service “included several unmonitored vehicles mixed in with a broader robotaxi fleet equipped with safety monitors.” He said the market will see an increase in the proportion of autonomous and supervised vehicles over time.
Tesla stock rose 4.2% on Thursday, closing at $449.36.
Tesla already lags behind several companies that operate commercial robotaxi services without drivers or safety guards. of the alphabet While Waymo leads the US market, Baidu’s Apollo Go has an advantage in China, where competition is fierce. we ride
Other players are also joining the fight. Amazon’s Zoox currently operates limited unmanned services in the United States, and startups such as May Mobility and Nuro are also developing unmanned services.
Elon Musk waves to the crowd at the 56th World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 22, 2026.
Dennis Bariboos | Reuters
Musk said in July that Tesla will “probably have self-driving rides in half of the U.S. population by the end of the year.” The company fell far short of that goal.
But Tesla drummed up excitement with the launch of its ride-hailing app, Robotaxi, and initial service in Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area.
In Texas, Tesla received a permit to operate a transportation network company and is allowed to use “self-driving systems,” or driverless vehicles, in the state. But in California, Tesla has not yet received a permit that would allow it to conduct driverless tests or robotaxi rides with a human behind the wheel and available to steer and brake at any time.
“I think self-driving cars are essentially a solved problem at this point,” Musk said Thursday, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, adding that he expects his company’s robotaxi service to be “very popular in the United States by the end of this year.”
Mr. Musk is famous for forgetting his self-imposed timelines to achieve major technological and business accomplishments.
In 2019, he told investors he was “very confident” the company could turn existing vehicles into robotaxis with a software update by the end of next year.
Tesla’s ability to maintain investor enthusiasm as EV sales slump may depend on its ability to expand its driverless ride-hailing service in the U.S. this year and upgrade its vehicles from partially autonomous to fully autonomous systems. Currently, the company’s premium systems are sold as FSD (Supervised), and the company plans to also sell FSD Unsupervised systems in the future.
The majority of U.S. consumers surveyed late last year did not want to ride a robotaxi, especially because of safety concerns, according to a study by the Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report.
Analysts at Deutsche Bank wrote in a note this week that they expect “potential sales growth to slow” for Tesla and the EV maker. Rivian This year, “autonomy and physical AI will drive the narrative.” They also said that “Tesla will need to demonstrate unsupervised scale-up of FSD and robotaxi (which in our view is clearly behind schedule) before receiving any incremental valuation.”
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Late last year, California regulators found Tesla engaged in deceptive marketing and false advertising surrounding its vehicles’ self-driving features. Additionally, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is currently investigating how often Tesla’s FSD system may have caused traffic safety violations.
According to TeslaDeaths.com, which uses NHTSA data, legal filings and media reports to track fatal Tesla crashes, 65 people have died in Tesla crashes involving the use of Autopilot, including two where the company’s FSD system was activated in the seconds leading up to the crash.
Tesla is scheduled to announce its fourth quarter results on Wednesday.
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