Tesla has yet to start testing its robotaxi without driver weeks before launch

Summary

Tesla has reportedly yet to start testing its robotaxi service in Austin without a safety driver behind the wheel – just weeks before the planned launch. For months now, Tesla and CEO Elon Musk have been hyping the launch of “Tesla Robotaxi”, a Uber-like ride-hailing service powered by autonomous Tesla vehicles, starting with a launch in Austin, Texas in June. We have extensively reported that this launch is disappointing compared to what Tesla promised for years: that all its consumer vehicles built since 2016 are capable of self-driving. Instead, Tesla plans to build an internal fleet of “10-20” Model Ys and have them offer ride-hailing services in a geo-fenced area around Austin, Texas, helped by human teleoperations. This is very similar to what Waymo has been offering in other cities for years, specifically in Austin, for months now. Advertisement - scroll for more content Even with the significant downgrade in self-driving capabilities promised with this project, there are many doubts about Tesla’s ability to achieve the lesser goal. That’s because the robotaxi service will be based on Tesla’s ‘Supervised Full Self-Driving’ program, which is currently achieving about 500 miles between critical disengagements fleet-wide, according to the latest crowdsourced data. Tesla will be able to improve on that by optimizing a version for the geo-fenced area in Austin and it has been training its neural nets for that for months with vehicles going around Austin. However, a new report now claims that Tesla has yet to start testing its service without safety drivers at the wheel – similar to Tesla’s public ‘Supervised FSD’. The Information wrote in a new report: Elon Musk’s deadline for launching Tesla’s first robotaxi service, in Austin, Texas, is weeks away, but the company hadn’t started testing its cars without a human safety driver as of last month, according to an engineer close to the testing and a former employee. That’s a crucial step required before Tesla can laun...