After announcing it in October last year, Tesla has taken its first big step in bringing a robotaxi service to the masses. It is currently operating a limited service in Austin, Texas, and the San Francisco Bay Area in California. It’s limited, though, because right now only Tesla employees can use it.
The employee-only robotaxi service is meant to serve as a testing ground before the full service launches, perhaps this summer. According to a post on X on Wednesday, the program has already completed more than 1,500 trips and 15,000 driving miles. The company also noted that the service, which uses its Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology, isn’t fully autonomous as there is still a safety driver in the vehicle who can intervene if necessary.
“This service helps us develop & validate FSD networks, the mobile app, vehicle allocation, mission control & remote assistance operations,” the company explained in its post. Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly told investors at the end of last year that the company plans to be “able to do an initial launch of unsupervised, no one in the car, full self-driving in Austin in June.”
