Tesla’s Robotaxis are officially powered by human drivers as it launches ride-hailing in Bay Area

Tesla’s ‘Robotaxi’ is now blatantly operated by human drivers as the automaker launches a ride-hailing service in the Bay Area through its ‘Robotaxi’ app.

When Tesla launched its ‘Robotaxi’ service in Austin, we noted how it was just for optics and the fact that it still uses “safety monitor” in the front passenger seats makes it a “supervised” system and therefore, not a level 4 autonomous driving system.

It’s basically Tesla’s consumer ‘Supervised Full Self-Driving’ (FSD), but with the supervisor moved from the driver’s seat to the front passenger seat.

The reason Tesla was able to do that is that Texas law allows it, and it looks better for them than having a driver in the driver’s seat. Instead, the “safety monitor” has access to a kill switch that can stop the car, something Tesla is not publicizing.

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Over the last few weeks, Tesla has been teasing the expansion of its Robotaxi in California despite not having secured any of the permits required for an automated driving system in the state.

Now, Tesla has expanded its service area in the “Robotaxi” app to the Bay Area, but even though it’s in the “Robotaxi” app, it is only calling it a “ride-hailing service” because there’s a driver in the driver’s seat of each car:

Tesla fans have applauded the automaker for covering such a large part of the Bay Area, bigger than Waymo’s coverage of the region, but to be clear, Tesla’s service right now is not comparable to Waymo’s in the Bay Area. It’s only equivalent to Uber.

In fact, it’s the exact same service as an Uber driver who owns a Tesla with Supervised FSD in the Bay Area.

Politico reported that Tesla still hasn’t applied for any of the required permits to operate autonomous vehicles in California, despite CEO Elon Musk claiming just last week that Tesla was waiting for regulators.

Documents from the California DMV and Public Utilities Commission revealed that the state agencies were concerned by comments from Tesla employees regarding the automaker’s imminent launch of its Robotaxi service in the state, despite not having obtained any authorization.

Tesla’s regulatory counsel quickly intervened to explain to the state that there’s no such plan and Tesla only plans to launch a ride-hailing service for “employees, friends and family, and select members of the public”, which is apparently what was launched today.

The automaker is not looking for “vehicle operators” in 9 other US cities to launch the same ride-hailing service, which it operates under its ‘Robotaxi’ app.

Electrek’s Take

This is so blatantly misleading. Tesla is trying to make the public think it is a leader in autonomous driving by launching its ‘Robotaxi’ service in cities while being powered by human drivers.

It’s FSD in consumer vehicles. That’s all it is, and we know that it gets about 500 miles between critical disengagement, based on the best crowdsourced data.

By not applying for an autonomous driving permit, Tesla is making sure that it doesn’t have to report any data to the state.

Why doesn’t Tesla want to do that? The only thing that makes sense is that it is not ready for it, and the data wouldn’t look good.

This is all for show because Waymo is starting to rapidly expand and making Elon Musk look bad after he has been claiming for years that Tesla is the leader in autonomous driving with no close second.