“I’d say confidently next year,” Musk, the CEO of Tesla, said on the call. “I’m not sure when next year, but confidently next year.”
Musk noted that the Tesla team hasn’t “thought hard” about the details of adding cars that it doesn’t directly own to the robotaxi service, and was still primarily focused on safety in Austin, where it debuted operations in June with a safety driver in the passenger seat. “We need to make sure it works when the vehicles are fully under our control,” he said.
While Tesla’s robotaxi service is currently only available to invitees including social media influencers who regularly post about the company, and not the general public, Musk laid out lofty expansion plans for the robotaxi service on Wednesday’s earnings call, saying that Tesla was seeking regulatory permission to launch in the Bay Area, Nevada, Arizona, and Florida.
“As soon as we get the approvals and we prove our safety, then we’ll be launching autonomous ride hailing in most of the country, and I think we’ll probably have autonomous ride hailing in probably half the population of the U.S. by the end of the year,” he said.
So far, there have been no major safety episodes in Austin since the launch of the robotaxi service, Tesla’s CFO said on the call. Teslas have driven 7,000 autonomous miles thus far since June, he said.
