Tesla is working with Austin on deploying self-driving cars

Tesla is working with the City of Austin, the automaker’s new home, on deploying self-driving cars.

Now, Tesla simply needs to have self-driving cars.

According to a new Bloomberg report, Tesla has been in contact with Austin officials about the requirements to deploy self-driving cars in the city:

Emails acquired by Bloomberg through public records requests show a Tesla employee has been communicating with the city of Austin’s autonomous vehicle task force since at least May to establish safety expectations for the vehicles as the company decides if Austin will be the first Texas city where Tesla deploys driverless fleets.

Tesla has been holding these early discussions with some cities, like Palo Alto, since unveiling its steering wheel-less Cybercab and announcing that it will solve self-driving by the end of Q2 2025 with the first services launching in California and Texas.

California is the state with the most self-driving vehicles, and it has a long-established process to have self-driving rideshare services approved.

However, it requires safety standards and data reporting by the CA DMV. Tesla has long been embroiled in disputes with the state DMV to try to avoid reporting data about its Full Self-Driving program.

Texas is going to be a much easier market for Tesla’s self-driving effort. The state hasn’t regulated self-driving vehicles. It basically regulates them like regular vehicles.

They need to be able to respect traffic law, have video recording, insurance, and a license from the Texas Department of Licensing.

There’s no need to submit data proving it is safer than a human driver.

That’s good news for Tesla, considering the latest crowdsource data points to between 100 and 200 miles between critical disengagement.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk also has a good relationship with the state of Texas since moving all his companies to the state.

Electrek’s Take

If Tesla has a chance at deploying a self-driving system anytime soon, it has to be in Texas. I don’t think it’s anywhere ready to deploy its long-promised unsupervised self-driving, but I could see Tesla using an approach closer to Waymo and deploying its Cybercabs in a geo-fenced mapped out area where a team can teleoperate the vehicles if they have to.

I can see it happen.

Tesla will claim self-driving victory even though it has little to do with what it has been promising for years: its customer fleet becoming robotaxis.