According to Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, the company will extend its robotaxi service to the San Francisco Bay Area “in a month or two” pending regulatory permissions.
With only a dozen cars, a small number of passengers, and numerous limitations, such as a safety monitor in the front passenger seat, Tesla launched a test of the long-promised service in a restricted area of Austin, Texas, last month.
Tesla will extend the service to “a larger area in Austin this weekend“, Musk stated on his social media platform X in response to a user’s remark regarding the absence of an expansion update. Musk made no mention of the expansion’s location or scale.
When queried about a potential extension to the Bay Area by another X user, Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, Musk said, “Waiting on regulatory approvals, but probably in a month or two.”
Given that sales of Tesla’s ageing portfolio of electric vehicles have declined due to increased competition and a reaction against Musk’s acceptance of far-right political ideas, the company’s future depends on the successful deployment of robotaxis. Musk’s wager on robotaxis and AI-powered humanoid robots accounts for a large portion of the company’s trillion-dollar valuation.
Autonomous car commercialisation has been more difficult than expected due to expensive costs, stringent regulations, and probes that have forced many companies, like General Motors‘ newly opened Tab Cruise branch, to close. Prior to Tesla’s latest launch, Alphabet launched a new tab. The only business using driverless robotaxis to charge passengers was Waymo.
With roughly 1,500 cars, Waymo has been gradually growing its service for years. At the moment, it is accessible in San Francisco and other Bay Area cities, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta. According to Musk, Tesla plans to quickly expand the service to additional American cities.
However, California strictly regulates where and how businesses can run autonomous vehicles and demands testing data for permits, but Texas imposed virtually no regulations on Tesla.
To run a fully autonomous robotaxi service that charges consumers in California, Tesla would require a number of permissions from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).
The first of several permissions needed to eventually start the service was granted to Tesla by the CPUC in March. When Reuters asked the DMV and CPUC for comments outside of usual business hours, they did not reply.
During the first several days of its public test in Austin, social media videos from the company-selected riders revealed numerous traffic and driving hazards.
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