Tesla’s newly-launched ride-hailing service in San Francisco isn’t quite ready for the “robotaxi” designation. After launching its robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, with a “safety monitor” in the passenger seat last month, a video of Tesla’s service in San Francisco shows a vehicle arriving with a human at the wheel, as [reported earlier by *Business Insider*](https://www.businessinsider.com/teslas-ride-hailing-service-live-in-san-francisco-musk-says-2025-7). California requires companies to obtain three permits to operate a commercial robotaxi service. So far, the state has granted Tesla just one of the permits, allowing it to run a ride-hailing service with humans in the driver’s seat. The Alphabet-owned Waymo is currently the only company with the permits to offer commercial driverless rides in San Francisco. Read more: [https://www.theverge.com/news/716867/tesla-robotaxi-san-francisco-launch](https://www.theverge.com/news/716867/tesla-robotaxi-san-francisco-launch)
The Uber of robotaxi
Performance theatre to make it appear to the uninformed that Tesla is competitive with Waymo.
It's an embarrassment. Mind blowing to me that Elon fanboys still stand up for him, after all the lies and broken promises about self driving cars.
After the things crash into walls I don't want them driving autonomously tbh..
These “details” are of no importance to Billy buttfuck who invested his entire life savings into TSLA 3 years ago and is waiting for TSLA to hit $30T market cap per their lord and savior.
Uber without Extra steps
super embarrassing
The car sure looks like it's an AV. The passenger taps a button, and as far as I can see the car just starts on its own, the driver didn't do anything. Doesn't that require the CPUC permit they don't have?
They need to put the drivers in Optimus suits
so tesla still 50 yr behind waymo
Very on brand for Musk
I can somewhat understand fanboys. Its the investors that I cannot understand. WTF?
I checked som of theirs youtube channels and their detachement from reality is astonishing. One video said this robotaxi (it's not robotaxi even tesla doesn't call it that) launch (it didn't launch, not available to the public) expands service to milions of people (just a few invited ones). Another one was on different topic - samsung deal and how Tesla will compete with nvidia. The reality is Samsung fabs are so shit that even during biggest semiconductor demand ever they cannot find anyone who actually wants to use them. The most hilarious part was how Elon will "walk the line". Those cutting age fabs have no line. It's fully automated distributed system and all steps happen in machines that do work on invisible scale. Everything is controlled through computers. It's not a car factory. The main bottleneck is uv litography machine that only one company in the world can produce. It doesn't matter how fast you make the rest of the process.
Does the driver at least wear the spandex suit from the 2021 dance presentation of the first generation of optimus "robot"?
Waymo does as well they are. just there remotely.
Build yourself a Venn diagram then ask again.
Man I can’t wait until they have robo doctors
>One video said this robotaxi (it's not robotaxi even tesla doesn't call it that) launch (it didn't launch, not available to the public) expands service to milions of people (just a few invited ones). If you tried to engage a tesla fan in good faith and discuss the known facts, they would simply block or ban you 100% of the time. They have no use for anything other than fairytales. We're now 9 years into "autonomy is a solved problem" and on day one of its robotaxi launch just last month tesla had a series of dangerous mistakes and is back to putting human drivers in the driver seats, even with very limited operational domain.
Didn't the Soviets call the people that cleaned up after Chernobyl "biorobots"? So technically it's still a robotaxi. A biorobotaxi.
The desperation is palpable.
Stock up 5% upon this news!
Shut up fake news! It’s a robo taxi and it’s the best in the world! Buy Tesla stock!!!! /s
And crazy disregard for public safety. Waymo ran for years in a quiet Arizona retirement community (iirc), laid out like a grid, while they perfected their software. Tesla is just jumping into one of the most complex urban environments (SF) when they’ve had multiple close calls in Texas. I imagine the first person robotaxi kills will take a few hundred $billion off Tesla’s market cap.
I'm not gonna complain about this one. A human behind the wheel during testing is exactly how it should be done! It's what Waymo did at the start and it's what Tesla should be doing now. The embarrassment isn't that they have a human behind the wheel in SF, it's that they won't let the human sit behind the wheel in Austin!
Also, they klepped the font from the Cyberpunk 2077 game
We are the space robots We're here to protect you
I mean it’s 40%+ retail so a long way to go until anything pops
Legit question, will the drivers be using FSD for these rides? I can't seem to find evidence to support Irene the humans driving or fsd with the human ready to take over.
Friends that are Tesla stans say this is what's happening. The law seems to read they can't. I'm also trying to out one way or another.
I think you misspelled “double Tesla’s market cap.”
Potemkin Village would also be another appropriate Soviet reference.
Waymo started basically in Mountain View, California, and surrounding areas; primarily freeways, I think. They also used a closed course near there (Castle something iirc). Their launch ODD was originally in Chandler, Arizona.
Video makes it look like it's running essentially the same software as in Austin.
Tesla is catching up to the concept known as the Taxi
And a lot of institutional money in indexed funds as well so no selling pressure there either.
Promise something, fail to deliver. Sounds like Elon to me.
"well if those kids didn't get want to get run over they shouldnt have been in the schoolbyard at 12pm on a Wednesday."
"Each vehicular homicide proves they are pushing the edge and breaking things!"
Ride heiling service
TSLA is in S&P500, they have way more investors than just their fanboys.
Yeah I have a fund that includes them... Fuck everyone is so used to morons they just assume everyone is.
how do you say fsd doesn't work without saying it?
Except I don't even think they have the permits to autonomous testing.. it's literally a guy driving
Optimus subprime.
As much as I despise Elon, this is just a regulatory hurdle. Having said that after 50,000 miles, they can remove the safety driver. 50,000 miles should not take that long if you are running multiple vehicles...I would say a month max. So in a month it will be a Robotaxi, right?
Problem with these people is they are ALL IN INVESTORS. You would think some common sense would say not to put everything into one longshot. They also assume that 1) Tesla will dominate robotaxis and robots 2) That those things will be achievable 3) Competition will never catch up
Worse than Uber: your driver insists on sitting in the front passenger seat.
After they learned about the tunnels, such a progress in a tiny amount of time.
>Exit your robotaxi now "We... we're still moving" >Exit your robotaxi now ^^Mr. ^^Roboto ^^plays ^^quietly ^^in ^^the ^^speakers "You know I can hear you, and even see you moving your lips by looking at the rearview mirror? You're human." >I am not human. I am the neuro chip. Exit the vehicle now or be neuralyzed.
I found it funny that they had to grasp for the term "ride-hailing service", when it is clearly just a taxi.
🤣🤣🤣
🤣🤣🤣
I thought the California authorities said that Tesla didn’t have the required permits to do this whether or not they had a driver?
Yellow Taxi. With Uber, anyone can be the driver to drive any vehicle. With Yellow Taxi, the driver is an independent contractor driving the same style car, model y.
> If you tried to engage a tesla fan in good faith and discuss the known facts Sadly, this old-timey wisdom still applies to everyone, ourselves included: _You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into_. If you’re to change their minds, you have to find a way to address the emotional attachment they have to their position and change that on its own terms.
No, they just said Tesla can't test autonomous driving in public. They can of course use cars with drivers using the level 2 assistant FSD with supervision.
Wasn't it the Port Chicago Naval Base (or ex-Naval Base, to be accurate). Some one was testing self-driving cars in there, there's miles of deserted streets. Thought it was Waymo, but maybe it was someone else.
Freeways? Last I heard, at least in SF, Waymo doesn’t allow its vehicles on freeways?
Not with public passengers, no. But they've been testing on them for over a decade now.
I read it differently. "Tesla has not received approval from the CPUC to offer autonomous passenger service to customers, paid or unpaid, with or without a driver (nor has the company applied)," said Terrie Prosper, Director of Strategic Communications at the CPUC, in an e-mail to ABC7 News.
Bullish! Waiting for the next release of unsupervised version of supervised /safety monitored unsupervised FSD! Improvement is going to several orders of magnitude as usual
Agree. Good points.
Yes that's why Tesla calls it ride hailing
So you call and a taxi driver arrives to take you where you want to go. I wonder why no one ever thought of this before?
You called Waymo also that? I am not an Elon worshipper, but you know that this is coz of regulatory requirements
No because Waymo doesnt have a human driver. It says in the article "Waymo is currently the only company with all the permits to offer commercial driverless rides in San Francisco."
I know it doesn't at the moment, but it used to have them for many years. Did you call them a ride hailing service then?
Ah, I see what you mean. No, I did not call Waymo that, and here's why. In my city, I saw waymo testing their autonomous cars way, way before I even saw a commercial or a spokesperson talking about them. There was no promise to the public that it would be an autonomous service, only that they were testing towards it. I understand that when Waymo first tested, they had drivers and passengers inside. But during that period the public wasn't allowed to try them -- only for employees at the time I believe. By the time Waymo opened and since I've been using it, it has always been driverless and passengerless for me. I think this was around 2021(?), I may not be exact on the date I just remembered it was shortly after Covid. Tesla, on the other hand, especially Elon Musk have been talking about robotaxis and that it'll be here next year, since as early as 2016. I remember watching an interview about him saying Teslas will be able to go from California to NY autonomously. Now, I understand that tech progress requires testing and sometimes things don't go according to plan, and that's okay! But as a company and as a service, you can't just go out and advertise that you'll have a specific service, or will have a specific service, and then continually miss the release date year after year (almost a decade now!), and then once it finally releases, it's in the state of where your competitor's was 4 years ago. I understand that self driving tech is hard work and will require a lot of tweaking and it's still too early to call winners. But I do think Tesla is about 4\~ years behind their competitors in this state.
No dude, do your research. Waymo used to be open to public and had safety drivers for a long time before they switched to remote drivers to what it is now - maybe it is autonomous, maybe it is remote, I don't know
You're partially right. I just looked up the dates and Waymo had a passenger in the car from 2017 to 2020, but like I said -- in my city that was never the case. By the time Waymo had gotten to my city it had no passengers in 2021. Also, to clarify the distinction with their "remote driver", and what Waymo uses, is not a person driving the car from a data center. They have never done this. Their remote drivers is someone who looks at the vehicle sensor data to provide high level guidance. Like confirming that the path is clear or trace a suggested route on the screen. The system then drives itself via this guidance. Minor distinction but thought I point it out. But you're right regarding the dates. Looking it up makes it even worse for Tesla. I originally had thought Waymo released to the public in 2021, I was wrong. It released to the public in *2017.* So this means Elon was making claim for Tesla's autonomous driving while Waymo was actually out testing, and that Tesla's release is about 7 years behind Waymo, not 4. Thanks for correcting me. The distinction, and why I am making fun of Tesla, is that they have been bragging about delivering for 8\~ (since 2017) years while only releasing something comparable to their competitor's service in 2017, in 2025. That's why I didn't call Waymo the Uber of Robotaxi.
Yes, Tesla is behind Waymo per all these dates, but it is much ahead in terms of economics of the cars and scalability. How fast can Waymo scale? Lidar's are super expensive. Tesla mass produces all these cars every day. The dates give you a really small part of the picture. Waymo was ahead by 7+ years, correct? Then Tesla started in Austin, and already expanded to an area bigger than Waymo (to which Waymo responded and expanded their area). Waymo even until very recently - I think as recent as less as year or two, didn't even take the highways. Teslas take that on a routine basis in all their cars running FSD. What Tesla does in the next year can totally overtake Waymo in scale, number of cars, and miles driven. Of course Tesla can fail too, but if Tesla succeeds, it will succeed in as less as end of 2026. And it can start selling its fleet to ocmpanies. Waymo can't do that at all. If Tesla succeeds, Waymo will be rendered a junk product that Google will kill
You're right. But that's a big "if". Let's get there first before saying Tesla can outscale Waymo. They have to get to the L4 level first. I have been hearing as soon as next year with Tesla since 2017. Guess what year 2026 is? That's right. Next year! I have FSD and I have taken Waymo. If freeway FSD is what we're going off of.. then Tesla is in trouble tbh.
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