Tesla’s Robotaxis Roll In San Francisco But Humans Still Hold The Keys

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What is my purpose? You hold your hands just over the steering wheel but you are forbidden to ever touch it. Oh my god.

Naysayers: how dare they put a robotaxi out in public with very little testing. Someone is going to get hurt. Tesla \*puts safety driver in driver seat* Naysayers: it’s not autonomous driving if you have a driver in the driver seat

They are there in case of an emergency until further testing is completed. Extremely easy concept to grasp.

Yes. That’s why Elon shouldn’t have pretended it was a full launch in SF or Austin. These aren’t robotaxis. They are Tesla’s with safety drivers

Waymo launching service in Philly this month… with safety drivers behind the wheel. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/07/waymo-to-begin-testing-in-philadelphia-with-drivers-behind-the-wheel.html Companies gotta start somewhere to get to that end goal

I’m laughing at the idea that SF liberals will be using Tesla robotaxis given all the alternatives. Austin itself is suspect. Tesla is a partisanized company, to its detriment, and it will affect its efforts to roll this out in liberal cities.

People care more about their wallets than their principles. If Robotaxi is cheap, it will be used.

That's exactly why they put them in the passenger seat in Austin

What keys are they holding?

How’s it not? It’s just a safety driver. Once they’re removed a passenger can sit there. No difference. Car is still driving itself

The difference is the robotaxi have a remote support team helping them. The person in the car shouldn't have to do anything except for emergency stop. A normal Tesla with supervisor relies on the driver to take over and help it out, but the robotaxi should only need remote help for guidance on what to do.

Agreed. Eking should just not call it driverless then and stop bragging about how fast scale because they are behind

Except that there’s already dozens of videos of safety driver interventions and other errors in only 7000 miles in the Austin test

If you need someone in the car to perform emergency stops, which there’s plenty of evidence of already, then it’s no a robotaxi

Behind who? Honestly they and waymo are it. It’s only going to continue to grow and get bigger and better and all other companies won’t be able to keep up.

Behind waymo. Plus probably the Chinese makers pretty soon with how quickly they’re progressing

Look at a map of the country and see how much red there is vs blue. They will be fine

It's a robotaxi in testing.  Is a student driver driving with an instructor who has access to a brake pedal not considered a driver?

Exactly. This is testing. They shouldn't call it autonomous nor they should test with passengers.

The problem is that none of this aligns with Musk's claims of superior technology which can be activated with one software update. I took a Waymo with a safety driver in the Bay Area in 2019. It's just not very impressive in 2025.

Depends how often that safety driver intervenes 😂

Yeah that's why they're there. It's not ready to drive without supervision. If that's the only argument you're trying to make then you're absolutely right. If you're trying to say it's not driving itself then you're absolutely wrong... How would it get to the point of needing an emergency stop if it wasn't driving itself?

I’m trying to make the point that Elon sold this as something it hasn’t lived up to yet. Not even close in fact

Exactly.  In California they just need to get past 50mi without an intervention to go form "robotaxi in training" to just "robotaxi"

That's a wonderful point. He was absolutely wrong about how fast it was going to be.  But saying it's not even close is pretty blind. It can drive for hours without an intervention. Seems like they're getting closer and closer. I guess it depends relative to what. Time until they remove supervisors? Relative to competitors?

That’s the entire strategy of the Tesla robotaxi. It’s to undercut competitors on price and availability, just like the Falcon 9 cut all its competitors throats.

It’s not impressive if we ignore that one is done with far less equipment, which could result in lower costs, better scalability, better general applicability, better margins, more addressable market, etc. It’s like if someone hunted an elk on foot with just a knife and people were unimpressed because someone else did it 5 years ago with a helicopter and a sniper rifle.

So any other companies coming out with something like this shouldn’t go through the safety driver phase? They should skip it and go direct to consumer with no public testing just to impress you? My horse self drove my drunk ass home by itself in the 80’s… not impressed by any of this

It's weird that they still haven't even applied for necessary autonomous passenger service permits. You'd think that would be the first thing to do when trying to launch an autonomous passenger service. It would also help a lot with gaining trust of your potential customer base.

Tesla does not have and has not applied for the permits for a paid or unpaid service, with or without human safety drivers.

Testing and launching a service are not the same thing.

It’s getting closer, but still nowhere near competitors at the moment. For some context, Robotaxi drove 7,000 miles in a little over a month. Waymo on the other hand drives 7,000 miles every 30-35 minutes. Yes we see Waymos doing dumb shit from time to time, but they are driving well ~1250x the number of miles for any given timeframe, and with no one in the car.

I think it will be used, but Tesla first needs to **apply** for the permits to even have a service that can use autonomous vehicle with a safety driver.

Technically they're doing infinity times the miles since robotaxi driving should not count towards autonomous miles as long as they have a supervisor on board.

Now look at the same map but scaled to population density. Autonomous ride hailing needs densely populated areas to make financial sense, otherwise cars sit around unused waiting for a ride. Sure with customer vehicles in the distant future, maybe that problem goes away, but that requires extremely good software, which Tesla is really far from regardless of what Elon says.

So hypothetically they are way behind if we just jump ahead and everyone does good and they just stay the same. Got it.

This is true

What if they been doing this with employees for over a year now?

Did you try reading the article you linked to? >With its so-called road trips, Waymo seeks to collect mapping data and evaluate how its autonomous technology, Waymo Driver, performs in new environments, handling traffic patterns and local infrastructure. Road trips are often used a way for the company to gauge whether it can potentially offer a paid ride share service in a particular location.  They are not launching in Philly this month

Great! So why are they building this out in the blue parts? I’m sure robotaxi will be so succsssful in cow counties!

What happens when that competitor, Alphabet, has deeper pockets?

Except waymo hasn't been claiming for years how they will flip the switch and have milion robotaxis. THey are not worth trillion dollars either.

Very accurate take

Waymo is owned by Alphabet, a... Looks at notes... 2 trillion dollar company

Both seem like fair criticisms. They had huge claims of what robotaxis would be and what it has ended up being is nothing like those claims🤷‍♂️ One of them was the self driving being unsupervised. This was supposed to be just around the corner since 2017 if not earlier.

That has to be one of the silliest copes I’ve seen. What the parent company is worth is completely irrelevant. The parent company has that worth because of other companies it owns.

Well, waymo for example have much more sensors on the car, Tesla is trying a different approach with just cameras, the advantage is cost reduction for the end consumer. Let’s see if Tesla can catch up

Waymo is doing the same for the NYC launch as well.

Like Alphabet will just sell robotaxi rides at a loss forever because they have to match Tesla’s cost advantage? They’re already more expensive than Uber and Lyft. People will pay for no driver, to some extent, but will they pay for no driver and no Elon?

They also don’t make their cars. Or solar energy, or robots, or rooftops, battery packs. Semi truck. You get the point lol

They have like 1500 cars with over 100 million miles without a driver at the wheel serving customers.

Are there actually dozens of videos of interventions? I try to keep in the loop but have only seen a couple.

Source: Trust me bro

And robotaxi is valued at a small percentage of Tesla's overall business. But because it's all under one company, ya that makes the valuation conversation different.

I'm laughing that people on reddit think politics will enter the minds of the majority when it comes to finding the cheapest & most available ride in the future.

What an incredibly dumb statement. While it should be self-evident, I’ll explain … Google has an actual, growing, profitable business. In 2024, they had $100B in profit (Tesla had $7), which was a 35% increase from 2023 (Tesla declined 50%, and this year will be worse). Google’s P/E ratio is a reasonable 20 (Tesla is almost 200). Waymo had a $45B valuation in its last round, about 9 months ago. If Tesla was held to the same standards and metrics as Google, it would be a $25 stock. If it was held to the same standard as Ford, it would be a $10 stock.

Analysts have Robotaxi as anywhere from 40% (UBS) to 90% (ARKK) of Tesla’s current valuation. Their car business is shrinking and unprofitable. Their energy credit business is going away in 2 months. If Robotaxi is indeed a “small percentage” of Tesla’s valuation, I’m curious how you get to $1T in market cap.

Does it matter? Margins on cars are not that amazing. By buying from someone else they only loose the margin. Tesla doesn't get cars for free because the make them. They only save on margin. T Tesla doesn't sell robots or semis, they just have a few test ones. Solar rooftops are pretty much dead.

I’ve seen more than I can count. There’s even a guy who keeps a running list but I don’t have the link handy

You clearly don’t live in San Francisco.

Oh, you think Tesla can deliver rides for less and make a profit. Okay then.

Fail

They only lose on margin assuming Tesla (or potentially someone else with lower costs in the future) would sell them unlimited vehicles at the current prices whenever they wanted them. And assuming they only need the vehicle with no additional retrofit it hardware required. All other EV manufacturers have a much higher cost. And Waymo requires an expensive (to buy and to retrofit) set of hardware on top of the base vehicle. Without owning the vehicle manufacturing, they also have much less control over the main capital expense of running a robotaxi service.

I think this is partially Goomba Fallacy and these are different groups of naysayers. But there's definitely a subset of haters who will find something to critisize no matter what, even if it directly contradicts their earlier statements.

No it isn’t Elon himself said that solving full self driving (which is necessary for robotaxis) is the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money and basically being worth nothing. Also it doesn’t change that Waymo is still its own company and under a parent company.

If robotaxis will be as big buisness as some people thnk (I don't agree personally) Waymo could just partner up with a manufacturer and get cars fitted with everything on the production line. Or even get there own SKU of a model. There is also the fact that Tesla has not yet proven their cars can act as completely unsupervised.

lol even the article says "testing". It's not a launch.

[There are many clips of robotaxis speeding, driving in the wrong lane, stopping in the middle of the road](https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1ljxd63/list_of_clips_showing_teslas_robotaxi_incidents/), and more. Those clips are from 30 days ago and many more things have happened since then. [There's even been a time where a robotaxi almost crashed into a train](https://www.torquenews.com/11826/tesla-robotaxi-passenger-says-tesla-employee-had-intervene-stop-robotaxi-driving-railroad). Just imagine how unsafe a person would have to be to collect all of these "incidents" in just 7000 miles.

Here you go, bro. [A outdated collection from over a month ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1ljxd63/list_of_clips_showing_teslas_robotaxi_incidents/) and [ a more recent time where a robotaxi almost crashed into a train](https://www.torquenews.com/11826/tesla-robotaxi-passenger-says-tesla-employee-had-intervene-stop-robotaxi-driving-railroad). There are many more, this list is not exhaustive, just some that I had saved.

Do you have a source on that? 50 miles is crazy low.

Then why do they need the drivers in the car now? Waymo tests with drivers, then removes the drivers at launch. If Tesla has been testing for years then why are they still not confident in the safety of their system?

It’s possible. It’s also possible camera only is a dead end. The cost advantages on a per vehicle, per ride basis are obvious. They make their own vehicles instead of partnering. cameras are cheap compared to a bunch of radars, lidars, and cameras combined and bought at very low volumes. But if it never works then it never works. We will have a better idea in about a year. Theranos‘s Technology never worked for example. If it had it would have actually been amazing, but it never worked.

More like somebody who definitely sniped an elk from a helicopter and has proof compared to somebody who says they could definitely do it with a knife before the end of the year (but they've been saying that for 10 years).

The permits would require making safety reports that they really really don't want to do.

The premise of the comment I’m responding to was Waymo driving with a safety driver in 2019, which Tesla has also done, not promised to do in the future. You’re doing a different comparison/premise.

Robotaxi may be by far the biggest contributor to TSLA, but if Optimus goes as planned, then that will make Robotaxi a tiny slice.

The size of the Robotaxi market depends on the price of the service. Currently, Uber/Lyft rides cost as much or more than traditional taxi services, so the size of the market is only enhanced by the convenience due to the increased availability of the service beyond traditional service areas. Waymo service is generally even more expensive and less available, so the market is even smaller. The point of removing the human driver is to reduce the cost of the service, which Waymo is not able to do... This is mostly because of the cost of the vehicle and hardware. Even at current pricing, Waymo is unprofitable. If Tesla is able to reduce the cost of providing the service, they can greatly expand the size of the market. The cost of the service is a combination of the one-time capital costs (vehicle manufacturing cost, sensor suite, and compute) and operational costs (energy, maintenance, platform/operations). Waymo's current operation is inefficient in both areas. Everything is unproven until it is. Tesla will get there.

The guy trying to hunt with knife knows he can get an elf from helicopter with sniper rifle, at least he is trying something the guy on the helicopter is not willing to. Tesla can fit a bunch of sensors on top with their AI capabilities I am sure mapping an area is not hard, but the car will cost $200k, I am not in that upper bracket to own that. Tesla is my daily car to work with or without FSD, it’s getting better but not perfect, safety features on the car already exceeds most of the cars on the road, if they figure out the FSD someday it would be just the cherry on top. And I am glad Waymo is there as a competitor to help push Tesla to keep their eyes on the price.

> The guy trying to hunt with knife knows he can get an elf from helicopter with sniper rifle No, he said they were doomed for even trying. A "fools errand". > but the car will cost $200k This is very old information. Lidar has dropped in cost and today it's at $1000/car and some estimate $100/car within 5 years. That's on par with cameras.

And they’re right on both counts, what’s the tea here?

Safety ~~drivers~~ passengers

So the taxis aren’t all that robo are they ?

I asked Grok to analyze Tesla’s permits and explain what they are allowed to do and not do, along with explaining the consequences of not following regulations, here is the conclusion: ### Conclusion Tesla cannot legally launch a true autonomous robotaxi service in California without obtaining the necessary CPUC and DMV permits, which it has not applied for as of July 25, 2025. To proceed in the coming days, Tesla is likely to rely on its existing TCP permit to offer a human-driven taxi service, possibly branded as a “robotaxi” for marketing purposes, with safety drivers controlling the vehicles. This approach would comply with current regulations but fall short of the fully autonomous service Musk has promised. Regarding the risk to Tesla’s DMV permits, revocation is unlikely if Tesla adheres to the limitations of its TCP permit and operates non-autonomous vehicles. However, any attempt to use autonomous systems for public passenger services without proper permits could lead to severe consequences, including vehicle impoundment, fines, or revocation of its drivered testing permit. Tesla’s history of classifying FSD as “driver-assist” has allowed it to avoid some regulatory scrutiny, but this strategy may not hold if the company explicitly violates AV regulations. To avoid these risks, Tesla must either limit its service to human-driven vehicles or begin the lengthy process of applying for AV permits, which could take months or years given California’s rigorous standards.[](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2025/07/25/tesla-doesnt-need-permits-for-their-ca-robotaxi-it-may-come-today/)[](https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-has-applied-arizona-robotaxi-service-certification-state-transport-2025-07-10/)[](https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/tesla-plans-to-launch-robotaxis-in-san-francisco-this-weekend-business-insider-reports-4153289) If you have further questions or need clarification, let me know!

more sensors != better though.

There we go! Thanks for sharing. I haven’t seen the whole itinerary of events yet. And wow those are some bad mistakes

Can confirm I wouldn’t be opposed to more sensors on my car even if it cost me a couple grand more.

The US will not allow that.

Even if Tesla had data showing that deploying Robotaxi software to every car with AI4 was safe it’d still be a dumb move. From a PR and regulatory standpoint, rolling out slowly and starting with safety monitors is the best move.

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Saying that without stating for what state is mega useless

Okay well this entire thread is about Robotaxi in California, so I didn’t think it was remotely necessary to specifically call out the state. AV regulation is a state right, not a federal right. States’ rights matter… I’ll clarify it for you though: In the state of California, Tesla only has a TCP permit through the CPUC, which only allows for manually driven vehicles, aka limos and taxis. Tesla does not have the permits to use autonomous vehicles to give rides to non-employees, paid or unpaid, with or without a safety driver. Tesla has also not applied for this permit as of yesterday. I asked Grok to clarify if Tesla using supervised FSD with safety drivers to give unpaid rides would violate CPUC regulations and Grok said that it would. So I don’t know what to tell you. Everything I have seen points to this being self defeating and will likely cause longer delays to bringing actual Robotaxi service to CA, which is the ultimately part of the goal for everyone in this sub.

Classic Elon.

I SMH at the average level of legal knowledge in this sub.

So Robotaxi is now officially a very expensive taxi-service 😂

Yeah especially after all this time. Hopefully they’ll be able to do it at some point, but I’ve lost a lot of confidence in them. Especially with the vision only approach which doesn’t seem to work very well.

Waymo is not launching a Philly service this month. They are doing private testing.

I want as many as are necessary, and not a single one more

Redundancy is better though.

Release the safety data, all of it, and then let me know whether it's safe. The fact that they're not compelled to do this by law already is a joke.

No one is saying its not autonomous. But it is definitely FSD (supervised)

Yes they have. Tesla has a TCP license it is 0046782-A This allows Tesla to operate a taxi service. Its the exact same type of license Waymo has.

Tesla has the exact same authorizations as waymo.

Baby steps dude. Having the cars 100% drive themselves with a person in the passenger seat is a pretty huge step forward. Waymo did this exact same process a few years ago. Tesla is expanding much quicker than waymo is.

No dude. Robotaxis will be insane value for tesla. If they make it cheaper to take a robotaxi than car ownership, it literally changes American car culture. Optimus will also be big. So is teslas large battery storage. But robotaxis is the holy grail.

What are you talking about. Look on the fucking CA DMV and CA CPUC websites, they do not have the same permits.

YOU NEED MORE THAN A TCP TO OPERATE AN AUTONOMOUS RIDE HAILING SERVICE IN CALIFORNIA. Please for the love of all things good in this world, ask Grok to explain this to you.

Tesla has like $30 billion in cash. They just need to break even on cars now. I bet that Tesla reverses course on selling the robotaxis. And they operate the taxis themselves. Why split the revenue 75/25 when it could be 100% tesla? They were willing to do that when the money was easy. I bet anything that they change their tune and keep the tech and the vehicles for themselves.

Are they not allowed to test this? Should they just launch and find out?!

The question that was in my mind as well, maybe with human passengers they are testing it

They can test but in ways that won't put the public in danger. The public deserves to know how much danger they're being put in by having these things around.

Head in the sand, nice

Either bots or just shockingly dense. Nice username.

Tesla is going to need to seriously ramp up mileage if they want to show this isn’t a bunch of bullshit. As of the earnings call, Robotaxi had driven a total of 7,000 miles over 32 days (with the safety monitor). Waymo drives 7,000 miles with no one but paying customers in the car every 30-35 minutes. Okay so Waymo had 100x+ more cars… on average, a single Waymo car drives well over 1500 miles per week. The entire Robotaxi fleet is drive a hair over 1500 miles per week. I think this was the single most important piece of info from the earnings call, which mostly went unnoticed. A few people like Sawyer Merritt posted about it, but I think he deleted his tweet after someone pointed out how abysmally low that number actually is. Sigh.

Tesla can figure it out dude. They got smarter people than you on it.

But there shouldn’t be baby steps anymore. Elon and Tesla has said that these cars will be fully self driving in a years time since 2017 at least. That’s almost a decade ago. According to their claims they were supposed to be way ahead of the competition. Now they are very far behind.

Tesla has more than 4 billion FSD miles driven.  That's a lot more testing than all the other companies combined 10x over.

They don't have 40k+ miles without intervention like other companies have.

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that would be an argument for more cameras. Not additional sensor types.

Buy puts I guess. I'll sell you them

> it’s not autonomous driving if you have a driver in the driver seat This is not a serious complaint if you believe that there *should* be a safety driver before a fully autonomous robotaxi

I can't with you people

My guy, please please please use your brain, I’m begging you. If you don’t want to, please at least use Grok. Tesla has a **basic** TCP license, this only allows you to act as a limo or taxi service using manually driven cars, this has nothing to do with autonomous vehicles. This is just a license to exist as a business that can serve rides for people. Waymo also has this license. From the DMV, Tesla only has a permit for testing with a safety driver. That’s it. They do not possess deployment permits. They also do not possess CPUC TCP licenses for anything else. Waymo only the other hand has TCP Licenses for: **Drivered Pilot, Drivered Deployment, Driverless Pilot, Drivered Deployment**. Please actually learn about autonomous vehicles outside of what idiots on X post.

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This entire thread is talking about CALIFORNIA

In which world a taxi service needs invites for access? 😂

Yeah , it’s odd I’ll admit

Cant really change the past. Just because the timeline was wrong doesn’t mean fsd unsupervised will never exist.

Sure. But it is looking less and less likely unfortunately

Lol, they are literally using it in Austin as you typed that.

Not unsupervised