Tesla is in talk for a Robotaxi test program in Palo Alto, but the scale is underwhelming

Tesla is in talks for a Robotaxi test program in Palo Alto, according to a local official, but the scale is a bit underwhelming.

Local Palo Alto news is reporting that the city has confirmed that it held talks with Tesla to use its newly unveiled Robotaxi in its rideshare program (via Palo Alto Online):

The city recently held a preliminary discussion with Tesla to discuss a potential partnership, according to Meghan Horrigan-Taylor, the city’s spokesperson. If approved, the deal could supplement the existing taxi service that serves the Palo Alto community, including Palo Alto Link, a rideshare program that made its debut last year.

Council member Greg Tanaka attended Tesla’s We, Robot event earlier this month and at a council meeting on Oct. 21, he talked about Palo Alto partnering with Tesla:

Tesla has the technology, they have the hardware but they’re looking at test areas. That’s where Palo Alto comes in.

The city has its own rideshare program called Palo Alto Link and Tanaka thinks that using Tesla’s Robotaxi for it could help keep it going:

I think everyone in the community loves it, but the big question we’ve all been discussing is, ‘How do we fund it?

Palo Alto Link is extremely small, with only 3.1 users per hour of service, which is limited.

After launching the service last year, thanks to a grant from the county, the city now has to support the program itself. The city is expected to vote to extend the program, seemingly hoping to eventually reach a deal with Tesla.

Tesla’s official timeline, as per CEO Elon Musk, is to achieve “unsupervised self-driving” in California and Texas next year and its Robotaxi, which doesn’t have a steering wheel, will come in 2026.

There are serious doubts about this timeline since Musk has said that Tesla would achieve unsupervised self-driving by the end of every year for the last 5 years.

Electrek’s Take

I have severe doubts about this happening. First off, I don’t think Tesla is technologically ready for it since Robotaxi relies on FSD, which is not ready for unsupervised self-driving and probably won’t be for a while.

This is also in California, and it would require Tesla to report its data to the CA DMV, and the automaker has been going out of its way to avoid that for years.

It is also a super small rideshare service that wouldn’t be the best example for Tesla since rideshare services are mainly about the logistics of routing drivers and matching them to riders, but at 3 users per hour, the sample size is very small to achieve that.