Tesla is “tentatively” rolling out its robotaxi service next week, as Elon Musk finally follows through on his decade-old promise to develop a self-driving Tesla taxi.
“We are being super paranoid about safety, so the date could shift,” Musk said on X — which means the launch could be delayed anywhere from a week to another five years (“I tend to be a little optimistic with time frames,” he said in October).
One week out from its launch in Austin — home of Tesla’s headquarters and another self-driving car service — locals say they’re concerned about the robotaxis’ safety features. Namely, that they don’t work.
A safety demonstration last week placed a self-driving car on suburban routes with bus stop signs and child-size mannequins, KXAN reported.
On all six test drives the Tesla drove past the sign, ran over the mannequins, and kept going. For those not versed in vehicular manslaughter, that’s a hit-and-run.
“The product does not work,” Dan O’Dowd, founder of the Dawn Project, told KXAN. The Dawn Project, which organized last week’s safety demonstration, is a national organization advocating to ban commercial, often “unsafe” software from high-risk fields like automobiles and aerospace (essentially, the places where you really want to be safe). So naturally, Musk’s field of work is something of a field day for them.
“The self-driving Teslas will not stop for that bus,” Dowd continued. “They do not see it as a bus. They do not know that is a bus. They don’t understand what a bus is.”
The launch is expected to roll out around 10 robotaxis that will be monitored remotely, Musk told CNBC last month. The cars will be Model Y Teslas, which are already on the market, equipped with the new self-driving software. If the launch in Austin is successful (a big “if”), Tesla will offer thousands of robotaxis nationwide, expanding into cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, CNBC reported.
Musk also said he anticipates hundreds of thousands of Tesla robotaxis will hit U.S. roads by the end of next year. Which might be a problem, considering that Teslas have been the subject of two federal probes, caused at least one fatal crash, — and, again, committed six almost-hit-and-runs a week before the launch.
