On Wednesday, July 9, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that within one to two months, the “Robotaxi” autonomous taxi service will be expanded to the San Francisco Bay Area, pending regulatory approval. He also mentioned that this weekend, the Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas will be expanded.
Musk responded to a query about the progress of the Robotaxi business on the X platform, stating that Tesla will be “expanding the service range of the self-driving taxi in Austin this weekend.” In a subsequent post, when asked if Robotaxi operations will be available in the San Francisco Bay Area in California, Musk stated that the plan to expand to San Francisco is still “pending regulatory approval and is expected to launch within one to two months.”
Both of the aforementioned expansion plans did not disclose specific regions or scope.
In California, Tesla is promoting a paid fully automated self-driving taxi service, which requires approval from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). In March, CPUC approved Tesla for the first phase.
With Tesla experiencing a decline in sales of its existing electric vehicle products and Musk’s past political support causing market backlash, the company’s main focus is gradually shifting towards AI-driven Robotaxi and humanoid robot sectors.
However, the commercialization process of autonomous vehicles has proven to be more challenging than expected, facing high costs, strict regulations, and related investigations. Several companies, such as General Motors’ Cruise division, have announced their withdrawal from this market. Before Tesla launches its Robotaxi service, Alphabet’s Google subsidiary Waymo was the only company operating a paid autonomous taxi service.
Waymo owns approximately 1500 vehicles and has been cautiously expanding its services over the years. Currently, the service covers cities like San Francisco and other cities in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta.
Musk stated that Tesla will rapidly expand this service to other cities in the United States. In June of this year, Tesla began testing Robotaxi in certain areas of Austin, Texas, but on a limited scale, deploying around ten vehicles to transport specific passengers, with several restrictions in place, including the requirement for a safety monitor to sit in the passenger seat.