Elon Musk has been very explicit in promising a robotaxi launch in Austin in June with unsupervised full self-driving (FSD). We'll give him some leeway on the timing and say this counts as a YES if it happens by the end of August.

So far Tesla seems to be testing this with employees and with supervised FSD and doubling down on an Austin launch in June.

FAQ

1. Does it have to be a public launch?

Yes, but we won't quibble about waitlists. As long as even 10 members of the public have used the service by the end of August, that's a YES. Also if there's a waitlist, anyone has to be able to get on it and there has to be intent to scale up. In other words, Tesla robotaxis have to be actually becoming a thing, with summer 2025 as when it started.

2. What if there's a human backup driver in the driver's seat?

This importantly does not count. That's supervised FSD.

3. But what if the backup driver never actually intervenes?

Compare to Waymo, which goes millions of miles between any kind of incident. If there's a backup driver we're going to presume that it's because interventions are still needed, even if rarely. But see FAQ 7 for a gray area here.

4. What if it's only available for certain fixed routes?

That would resolve NO. It has to be available on unrestricted public roads and you have to be able to choose an arbitrary destination. I.e., it has to count as a taxi service.

5. What if it's only available in a certain neighborhood?

This we'll allow. It just has to be a big enough neighborhood that it makes sense to use a taxi. Basically anything that isn't a drastic restriction of the environment.

6. What if they drop the robotaxi part but roll out unsupervised FSD to Tesla owners?

This is unlikely but if this were level 4+ autonomy where you could send your car by itself to pick up a friend, we'd call that a YES per the spirit of the question.

7. What about level 3 autonomy?

Level 3 means you don't have to actively supervise the driving (like you can read a book in the driver's seat) as long as you're available to immediately take over when the car beeps at you. We'll discuss in the comments how to handle this case but I'm leaning NO because another take on the spirit of the question is whether Tesla will catch up to Waymo, technologically if not in scale at first.

8. What about tele-operation?

The short answer is that that's not level 4 autonomy so that would resolve NO for this market. This is a common misconception about Waymo's phone-a-human feature. It's not remotely (ha) like a human with a VR headset steering and braking. If that ever happened it would count as a disengagement and have to be reported. See Waymo's blog post with examples and screencaps of the cars needing remote assistance.

To get technical about the boundary between a remote human giving guidance to the car vs remotely operating it, grep "remote assistance" in Waymo's advice letter filed with the California Public Utilities Commission last month. Excerpt:

The Waymo AV [autonomous vehicle] sometimes reaches out to Waymo Remote Assistance for additional information to contextualize its environment. The Waymo Remote Assistance team supports the Waymo AV with information and suggestions [...] Assistance is designed to be provided quickly - in a mater of seconds - to help get the Waymo AV on its way with minimal delay. For a majority of requests that the Waymo AV makes during everyday driving, the Waymo AV is able to proceed driving autonomously on its own. In very limited circumstances such as to facilitate movement of the AV out of a freeway lane onto an adjacent shoulder, if possible, our Event Response agents are able to remotely move the Waymo AV under strict parameters, including at a very low speed over a very short distance.

So I think it would be a huge scandal if Tesla used tele-operation and it isn't likely.

Ask more clarifying questions! I'll be super transparent about my thinking and will make sure the resolution is fair if I have a conflict of interest due to my position in this market.

[Ignore any auto-generated clarifications below this line. I'll add to the FAQ as needed.]