Tesla to launch robotaxi service in Austin

Elon Musk himself announced the launch of the robotaxi service in Austin on X for 22 June. However, the date could still be postponed as Tesla is ‘paranoid’ about safety, as Musk stated. Previously, the taxi service with self-driving Teslas had been announced for June.

Musk had previously announced that Tesla would initially only deploy ten to 20 vehicles in Austin. A test phase started in Austin a few days ago, and the vehicles have only been travelling without a safety driver on board since the end of May. Model Ys built in Austin with standard hardware are being used, but with special software that is optimised for the geographically limited area in Austin.

The use of standard Model Ys has caused much debate, as Tesla has dispensed with ultrasound, radar and the expensive lidar sensors in its driving assistants and instead relies solely on cameras. Some experts consider the laser-based lidar sensors to be indispensable for realising a safe autonomous driving system. Waymo’s robotaxis also use lidar sensors.

Added to this is Tesla’s tight schedule, which may be somewhat at odds with Elon Musk’s ‘paranoid’ safety standards: As mentioned, the tests without a driver on board have only been running for a few days, plus the vehicles already spotted in Austin were accompanied by another Model Y with a driver – who can presumably stop the driverless car remotely if a problem arises. Waymo, on the other hand, tested its systems for six months with a safety driver and a further six months without a safety driver before the commercial launch with customers on board. Google’s sister company currently operates over 1,500 robotaxis and carries out more than 250,000 journeys per week in four US cities (including Austin).

With a purely camera-based system, Tesla would have a major cost advantage in the production of autonomous vehicles. The actual robotaxi called Cybercab, which was designed entirely without a steering wheel, is also to rely solely on cameras and therefore be offered at a significantly lower price, which could contribute to the rapid spread of the vehicles. Elon Musk had already announced in 2016 that every Tesla built since then would have the necessary hardware for autonomous driving, which could be activated via a software update; however, there are now major doubts about this. When asked directly by a user when Tesla would offer non-supervised autonomous driving to its customers, Musk only gave an evasive answer.

According to this, the vehicles in Austin will run software that has around four times as many parameters as the current US customer version FSD v13. Musk said that he could imagine this software being used in the customer fleet before the end of the year. Tesla is already using its driverless system on closed sites, such as factories, to move cars from the factory floor to the car park. According to Musk, a driverless Model Y built in Austin will be delivered directly to the customer’s door on 28 June, including on public roads.)

cnbc.com, electrek.co (Sichtungen in Austin)