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Elon Musk has said he hopes to launch a service that lets people say hello to self-driving Tesla cars in California and Texas sometime in 2025 — and claims his company has already tested the service in the Bay Area with employees.
The comments, made Wednesday on Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call, go further than what Musk promised two weeks ago at a Cybercab unveiling event. on Which In the final phase, Musk promised that Model 3 and Y owners will be able to use an “uncensored” version of Tesla’s full self-driving software in California and Texas. But he made no mention of a passenger transportation network, even though Tesla has been tossing around the idea for years.
It is not clear whether Tesla will be required to obtain permission from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to conduct the tests that Musk said his company is already conducting. The DMV did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The cars employees were praising had safety drivers at the wheel, David Lau, Tesla’s vice president of software engineering, said during the call. To be clear, no Tesla vehicle currently can drive itself without human intervention.
Today, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving, or FSD, software is an advanced driver-assistance system — not a self-driving system like the one Waymo uses in its robotaxis. FSD offers some of the automated features available on highways and city streets, but the system still requires the driver to pay attention and control.
Musk said on the call that Tesla would go through the appropriate regulatory approval process in California before opening such a service to regular consumers, though he lamented the red tape and said he expected a smoother process in his home state of Texas. The California regulatory process for launching a commercial taxi service involves multiple levels that require DMV approval and California Public Utilities Commission. Waymo is The only company currently allowed To operate a commercial driverless robotaxi service in San Francisco.
Musk also opined that Tesla may launch the service in other states by the end of next year as well.
These claims come after years of Musk exaggerating promises about Tesla’s ability to develop software that can drive cars autonomously. It was originally promised in 2016 in a Post since deleted Tesla’s website states that “all Tesla vehicles in production now contain fully self-driving hardware,” and in the following years has made it seem that it would only take the click of a button to fill the streets with self-driving cars.
Even the hardware part of this promise was not fulfilled.
Tesla had to upgrade its cars with these early versions of so-called “full self-driving” devices. Musk acknowledged on a call on Wednesday that cars equipped with what Tesla calls “Hardware 3” — which it began incorporating into its electric cars in 2019 — may eventually not be able to drive themselves. If Tesla one day reaches the point where its software can drive vehicles without supervision, and it doesn’t work on Hardware 3, Musk has promised to replace those devices at no cost to owners.
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