Elon Musk has been very explicit in promising a robotaxi launch in Austin in June with unsupervised full self-driving (FSD). We'll give him some leeway on the timing and say this counts as a YES if it happens by the end of August.

So far Tesla seems to be testing this with employees and with supervised FSD and doubling down on an Austin launch in June.

FAQ

1. Does it have to be a public launch?

Yes, but we won't quibble about waitlists. As long as even 10 members of the public have used the service by the end of August, that's a YES. Also if there's a waitlist, anyone has to be able to get on it and there has to be intent to scale up. In other words, Tesla robotaxis have to be actually becoming a thing, with summer 2025 as when it started.

2. What if there's a human backup driver in the driver's seat?

This importantly does not count. That's supervised FSD.

3. But what if the backup driver never actually intervenes?

Compare to Waymo, which goes millions of miles between any kind of incident. If there's a backup driver we're going to presume that it's because interventions are still needed, even if rarely. But see FAQ 7 for a gray area here.

4. What if it's only available for certain fixed routes?

That would resolve NO. It has to be available on unrestricted public roads and you have to be able to choose an arbitrary destination. I.e., it has to count as a taxi service.

5. What if it's only available in a certain neighborhood?

This we'll allow. It just has to be a big enough neighborhood that it makes sense to use a taxi. Basically anything that isn't a drastic restriction of the environment.

6. What if they drop the robotaxi part but roll out unsupervised FSD to Tesla owners?

This is unlikely but if this were level 4+ autonomy where you could send your car by itself to pick up a friend, we'd call that a YES per the spirit of the question.

7. What about level 3 autonomy?

Level 3 means you don't have to actively supervise the driving (like you can read a book in the driver's seat) as long as you're available to immediately take over when the car beeps at you. We'll discuss in the comments how to handle this case but I'm leaning NO because another take on the spirit of the question is whether Tesla will catch up to Waymo, technologically if not in scale at first.

Ask more clarifying questions! I'll be super transparent about my thinking and will make sure the resolution is fair if I have a conflict of interest due to my position in this market.

[Ignore any auto-generated clarifications below this line. I'll add to the FAQ as needed.]