It looks like Tesla robotaxi season is upon us.
Elon Musk has responded to a widely shared video of a Tesla driving around emblazoned with “Robotaxi” in a font style similar to the Cybertruck’s branding.
“Beautifully simple design,” the Tesla CEO said when re-sharing the video, which shows a refreshed Model Y — seemingly with no one in the driver’s seat — making a left-hand turn.
“These are unmodified Tesla cars coming straight from the factory, meaning that every Tesla coming out of our factories is capable of unsupervised self-driving,” Musk said in another response.
Tesla’s VP of Autopilot and AI, Ashok Elluswamy, also reposted the video and wrote “slowly slowly at first, then …” in an apparent reference to the company’s stated plans to start with a small rollout of its robotaxi service before expanding it in Austin.
While it’s not clear if this is a test vehicle or if Tesla has quietly begun offering public robotaxi rides, Musk had previously said the company was on track to begin the service sometime in June.
Tesla is now listed as an autonomous vehicle operator in Austin in the “testing” phase, according to the city’s Department of Motor Vehicles website. Other automakers are listed to be in the testing phase, while Waymo is marked as in “deployment.”
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
“We just want to put our toe in the water, make sure everything is OK, then put a few more toes in the water, then put a foot in the water,” Musk said during Tesla’s fourth quarter earnings call in January. “With safety of the general public and those in the car as our top priority.”
In May, Musk said that Tesla will launch its robotaxi service with around 10 vehicles in the first week, before increasing it to 20, 30, or 40, and eventually thousands within a few months. Musk also said he planned to expand the robotaxi service to other cities, like San Francisco, although he hadn’t provided a detailed timeline for that expansion.
On Tuesday, Musk also shared some new information about Tesla’s robotaxi in his responses to the video, saying the vehicles used “a new version of software, but will merge to main branch soon.”
“We have a more advanced model in alpha stage that has ~4X the params, but still requires a lot of polishing,” Musk added in the post. “That’s probably ready for deploy in a few months.”
In another response, he said that “the streets will change very rapidly,” and “autonomous cars will be very common throughout the world in 2 to 3 years.”
CFRA Research’s VP and senior equity analyst, Garrett Nelson, said in a note that he expects Tesla’s robotaxi launch, which could occur this week, “to be largely anticlimactic and lacking the fanfare of last October’s Robotaxi Day.”
“Initially, we see approximately a dozen driverless Model Y’s operating with Full Self-Driving technology in a geofenced area of Austin, Texas, with performance supervised remotely,” Nelson wrote. “We think the most important measure will be the number of incidents and interventions recorded by the vehicles in the coming months, and how quickly TSLA can dial back remote supervision and expand beyond the geofenced area to other markets.”
Seth Goldstein, analyst at Morningstar, previously told Business Insider that he distinguishes the June launch as part of Tesla’s testing phase and that it’ll be a few years before the service is widely available to the public
“I see really little impact in 2025,” Goldstein said, adding that Musk’s 2026 guidance for millions of robotaxis on the road is “a bit optimistic.”
“I think by 2028, Tesla will be there and be in the game and quickly be able to scale from there,” Goldstein said.
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