Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Wednesday that the electric vehicle maker will launch driverless ride-hailing services to the public in California and Texas next year, a claim that could face significant regulatory and technical challenges.
“We think we’ll be able to have paid rides in driverless Tesla cars next year,” Musk said on Tesla’s quarterly earnings call. He said Tesla currently offers an app-based ride-hailing service to employees in the San Francisco Bay Area.
His statement doubled down and expanded on a pledge he made at the time of Tesla’s robotaxi unveiling two weeks ago, where he said he expected to introduce “unexpected” self-driving in some Tesla vehicles in 2025. That incident, lacking a business plan around robotaxi, caused its stock to drop drastically.
However, on Wednesday Tesla won back the confidence of some investors by predicting a rebound in vehicle sales next year.
In California, in particular, the company will face an uphill climb in securing the permits needed to offer fully autonomous rides to paying customers.
Alphabet’s Waymo, which offers paid rides in autonomous vehicles in the Bay Area and Los Angeles as well as in Phoenix, Arizona, spent years testing millions of miles before receiving its first permit from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). Spent. Which regulates ride-hailing services.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles, which regulates the testing and deployment of autonomous vehicles in the state, told Reuters that Tesla was last reported using its autonomous vehicle testing permit in 2019. That permit requires a safety driver.
The company does not have a driverless testing permit and has not applied for one, the agency said.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
For ride-hailing service in the Bay Area for employees, the CPUC said Tesla does not need a permit, because employees are not considered passengers.
At Tesla’s robotaxi event on October 10, Musk unveiled a two-seater, two-door “Cybercab” without a steering wheel and pedals that will use cameras and artificial intelligence to navigate roads.
On Wednesday, he acknowledged potential difficulties in California, saying, “It’s not something we completely control,” but also said “I would be shocked if we don’t get approval next year.”
Ross Gerber, a Tesla shareholder and CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management, said “dealing with regulators is a very difficult process” and no one should consider it a “walk in the park.”
Texas has far fewer regulatory requirements for autonomous vehicles than California, but companies often spend months or years testing paid services before deploying them.
Rules for the deployment of autonomous vehicles are largely left up to individual states. On the call, Musk said there should be “a national approval process for Autonomy.”
Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system, called Full Self-Driving (FSD), which is the basis of Tesla’s robotaxi ambitions, has faced questions from regulators.
Last week, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) began investigating 2.4 million Tesla vehicles equipped with FSD after four alleged collisions, including a fatal 2023 crash.
Still, the idea of Tesla launching a robotaxi fleet sent shares of ride-hailing apps Uber and Lyft down 2.3% in post-market trading.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
