Just about six months after Tesla began testing its new Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, the company is now letting those cars drive around the city without a safety screen.
Removing the human safety screens brings the company a critical step closer to its goal of launching a real commercial Robotaxi service, and it’s a step that’s been years in the making.
CEO Elon Musk spent nearly a decade promising that Tesla’s cars were just a software update away from being completely driverless. It is now on the precipice of launching a service intended to compete with Waymo, the Alphabet-owned company that said last week it “never really stood a chance against Tesla.”
Removing the security screens will likely increase scrutiny of Tesla’s ongoing testing in Austin, doubly so when the company starts offering rides in empty cars. Tesla’s small test fleet has been involved in at least seven accidents since June. few details are known about the accidents from the company deletes aggressively his reports to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Video of a completely empty Tesla Model Y SUV began circulating on social media over the weekend, and on Sunday, Musk confirmed that his company was essay “No occupants.” Neither Musk nor Tesla has shared how quickly it plans to move to offer customers rides without a safety screen. The company’s X account provided a hint in a post on Sunday afternoon: “Slowly, then all at once.” Tesla’s head of artificial intelligence, Ashok Elluswamy, he wrote: “And so it begins!”
Tesla began offering rides in Austin to select influencers and customers in June, with an employee in the passenger seat who could take over if the cars did anything dangerous. These security screens have been moved to driver position in September. The company has since dropped the waiting list and gradually expanded its service area to cover much of the greater Austin metropolitan area. But his fleet size never grew to more than 25 to 30 cars by most fans.
Musk claimed that Tesla will operate its own fleet of Robotaxis and said in July trust this fleet it would cover “half the US population” by the end of this year. That outrageous goal, like so many Musk has set over the years, was revised in line with his claim in November that Tesla would roughly double its existing fleet in Austin, or about 60 vehicles.
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Tesla has been testing a ride-hail service in the San Francisco area for the past few months, in which drivers use the company’s advanced driver assistance software. California has enacted regulations that mean Tesla will have to combine multiple licenses if it wants to offer driverless rides in the state. Texas, on the other hand, does not.
Musk has also talked a lot over the years about allowing Tesla owners to add their personal cars to the company’s fleet of robot taxis. In 2016, he even promised that every car Tesla built had all the hardware needed to eventually become autonomous. This was wrong and this blog post has been removed from Tesla’s website (the company is facing a number of legal challenges regarding this). Tesla has gone through several versions of the hardware that powers its driver assistance software, meaning there are millions of cars on the road that, by Musk’s own admission in January, will need to be upgraded.
