Tesla Inc. is beginning to offer actual robotaxi rides in Austin, a milestone for the carmaker that launched a service seven months ago with vehicles that have relied on human supervisors sitting in front seats.
Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk touted the development in an X post Thursday, sharing a video from an ex-Tesla artificial intelligence engineer. The CEO announced last month that testing without any occupants in the company's cars was underway.
I am in a robotaxi without safety monitor pic.twitter.com/fzHu385oIb
— TSLA99T (@Tsla99T) January 22, 2026
Tesla's head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, wrote in a separate post that “a few” of the vehicles in the company's Robotaxi fleet will be unsupervised. The ratio of vehicles without safety monitors will increase over time, he said.
Musk has increasingly emphasised Tesla's work on AI and its robotaxi ambitions as the company has struggled with declining vehicle sales. While taking customers for rides without human backups is likely to boost sentiment about the capability of its driving system, Tesla has told regulators that its small fleet of cars operating in the Texas capitol were involved in eight crashes in six months last year.
Tesla's stock rose to session highs after the post, climbing as much as 4% as of 2:30 p.m. in New York. Shares of Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. dropped more than 3% in intraday trading before paring declines.
Musk said repeatedly in 2025 that Tesla would offer unsupervised rides before the end of the year. Other predictions were much further off the mark: In July, he estimated that half the US population might have access to autonomous Tesla rides by year-end.
Austin is the only city where Tesla is offering Robotaxi rides. While the company started a taxi service in the San Francisco Bay area last year, it has yet to apply for a permit to test autonomous vehicles without safety drivers in California.
Tesla is lagging far behind Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo, which started offering driverless rides in the Phoenix area in late 2018. The company also is charging fares for driverless rides in thousands of vehicles across Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta and Miami.
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