- Tesla’s former Autopilot head thinks self-driving cars will “terraform” urban spaces.
- Andrej Karpathy said robotaxis won’t happen “overnight,” but they’ll transform the way we live.
- Karpathy also cofounded OpenAI and coined the term “vibe-coding.”
The computer scientist behind the term “vibe-coding” has a bold prediction for the robotaxi revolution.
Andrej Karpathy, a founding engineer at OpenAI who previously led Tesla’s Autopilot team, wrote in a post on X on Thursday that while self-driving cars would not become the norm “overnight,” he expects the technology to eventually change urban spaces forever.
“It will be the first technology in many decades to visibly terraform outdoor physical spaces and way of life,” said Karpathy, who left Tesla in 2022.
“Less parked cars. Less parking lots. Much greater safety for people in and out of cars. Less noise pollution. More space reclaimed for humans,” he added.
Karpathy is also known for coining the term “vibe-coding,” which was named the 2025 “word of the year” by Collins Dictionary this month.
He said he expects autonomous vehicles to free up drivers’ time and “attention capital” from “lane following,” and make the delivery of physical goods cheaper and faster.
His comments echo the predictions of other robotaxi enthusiasts. At Tesla’s Cybercab unveiling last October, Elon Musk showed renders of post-robotaxi urban spaces and said the rise of autonomous vehicles would allow cities to turn parking lots into green spaces.
Musk has also pitched Tesla’s Full-Self Driving as a way to give drivers back their time. In Tesla’s most recent earnings call, he said the ability to text while the car drives itself will be the “killer app” that will fuel demand for the Cybercab.
Texting while driving is illegal in nearly all US states, and robotaxis have a way to go before they dictate urban planning.
Tesla operates a robotaxi service with safety monitors in the passenger seat in Austin and a FSD ride-hailing service with a driver in San Francisco, while Waymo offers driverless ride-hailing in five major US cities.
Both companies have ambitious expansion plans and are testing across the US, but face hurdles in the form of patchwork robotaxi regulation due to rules governing autonomous vehicles largely being left to individual states.
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