Karmactive Team
Elon Musk announced Tesla’s robotaxi service will tentatively begin picking up passengers in Austin, Texas, on June 22. The CEO shared this date after speculation that the launch might happen earlier in June.
“We are being super paranoid about safety, so the date could shift,” Musk said on social media. This careful approach comes after years of delayed promises about self-driving technology.
The initial robotaxi fleet will be small, with only 10-20 Model Y vehicles operating in specific areas of Austin. These are regular Tesla cars straight from the factory, not specially modified vehicles.
While Musk calls them fully autonomous, questions remain about how truly “driverless” these robotaxis will be. A video shared by Musk showed Tesla vehicles operating without drivers, but reports indicate cars with human monitors were following behind them.
Industry experts note that some form of human monitoring or “teleoperation” is standard for all robotaxi services today. This means humans can remotely guide or take control of self-driving cars when they encounter unusual situations or get stuck.
Tesla has posted job listings related to teleoperation that mention developing applications “that our Remote Operators use to interface with our cars and robots.” These operators would use “a state-of-the-art VR rig” to perform complex tasks remotely.
Despite questions from journalists, Tesla has shared limited information about these safety systems. The company disbanded its public relations team in 2020 and hasn’t responded to media inquiries about its robotaxi plans.
Government agencies have also provided little insight. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) sent Tesla a letter asking about its teleoperations plans, but the response deadline is June 19 – after the expected launch. City of Austin and Texas state officials have referred questions back to Tesla.
Austin spokesperson Cristal Corrales only noted that “The City works with AV [autonomous vehicle] companies before and during deployment to obtain training for first responders, establish expectations for ongoing communication and share information about infrastructure and events.”
Adding to concerns about transparency, Tesla has asked the City of Austin to withhold records related to its robotaxi launch. When news agency Reuters requested two years of communications between Tesla and Austin officials about the robotaxi plans, Tesla objected.
A Tesla attorney argued that releasing these records would reveal “confidential, proprietary, competitively sensitive commercial, and/or trade secret information” that could “irreparably harm” the company. The Texas Attorney General’s office is expected to decide this week whether these records must be released.
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Tesla faces existing competition in Austin. Waymo, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, has been operating robotaxis in partnership with Uber since March, just before the South by Southwest festival.
While some financial analysts have called the robotaxi launch a “watershed moment” for Tesla, others remain skeptical. Analysts at Baird Equity Research and Argus Research recently downgraded Tesla’s stock, citing “overenthusiasm for the robotaxi launch” and concern that “Musk’s comments regarding the robotaxi ramp are a bit too optimistic.”
Tesla stock has seen major swings recently, dropping 14% after Musk publicly argued with President Trump, then recovering those losses in subsequent days. Overall, the stock remains down 19% for the year.
If successful, Musk plans to expand the robotaxi service to thousands of vehicles across multiple cities in the coming months.
