Elon Musk explains how Tesla's robotaxi will work

Tesla is all set to launch its “unsupervised, no one in the car” robotaxi service in Texas' Austin city later this year, Elon Musk has announced.

During the earnings call last week, Musk discussed in detail Tesla's unsupervised Full-Self Driving (FSD) service, which begins in June. Here's what Musk said about the highly ambitious project of Tesla, which is "kind of like Airbnb," Forbes reported.

Paid service

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said that the company is gearing up to start its "unsupervised full self-driving as a paid service in Austin in June".


This service will later expand to "several other cities" in the US by 2025 end, he added.

According to Musk, Tesla's robotaxi service will be unsupervised, meaning that there will be "no one in the car”.

The passenger will be only required to share his pick-up and drop location and the car will take the person to the desired place without the driver.

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Tesla's competitor

Tesla's robotaxi service is being seen as a key rival to Waymo, which is level 4 Autonomy -- having the ability to drive itself without any human intervention in several conditions.

However, one thing that might put Tesla a step ahead of Waymo is that the latter is geofenced. Waymo's vehicles operate in a restricted area only. For example, its services in Los Angeles cater to only 79 square miles of the county, Forbes reported.

While Tesla's vehicles will be available in the city of Austin, Musk said, "It’s not that it doesn’t work beyond Austin. In fact, it does."

The world's richest person stated that the plan is to "put our toe in the water, make sure everything is OK, then put a few more toes in the water," and so on.

Tesla's past experiences

Even though on a small scale, Tesla is already using this service at its factory in California's Fremont. Workers there get to witness Tesla cars operating autonomously in full unsupervised self-driving mode.

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The director of the Department of Government Efficiency, popularly known as DOGE, shared that Tesla will also start this service at its Texas-based factory soon.

It can be recalled that Tesla had made people experience its Robotaxi service at an event in Burbank, California on October 10 last year.

Musk, 53, said Tesla's robotaxi service will be "kind of like Airbnb, where you can sort of add or subtract your house or your guest room”.

In order to make sure that the "whole thing works," Musk said that there is still a lot of work to be done.

He is expecting the company to be operating unsupervised activity through its internal fleet in several cities by the end of 2025.

FAQs

1. When will Tesla begin its robotaxi service?
Tesla will kickstart its robotaxi service from Texas' Austin city in June 2025.

2. Is Tesla's robotaxi service only restricted to Austin?
No. Elon Musk said that after its launch in Austin in June, this service will be made available in other cities as well by the end of this year.