- Tesla’s driverless taxi service is set to expand to the Bay Area in the following months.
- Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, said that the limited service area in Austin, Texas, will also expand.
- Currently, driverless Model Ys offer limited service to invitees while a safety monitor sits in the passenger seat.
Tesla will expand its robotaxi service to the San Francisco Bay Area “in a month or two,” according to the company’s CEO, Elon Musk. Rather than posting an announcement on the automaker’s social media channels, Musk spilled the beans through a couple of replies on X, the social media platform that he owns.
The driverless Model Ys are expected to hit the streets of the Bay Area after all the regulatory approvals are in place, the outspoken CEO replied to someone who asked when the robotaxis would be available in California. The jury is still out on when the gold two-seater Cybercab will join the fleet.
In the same thread, Musk added that the service area in Austin, Texas, will be expanded this weekend. Currently, Tesla offers robotaxi rides to a limited number of people in a small part of Austin, with a safety monitor in the passenger seat.
Musk didn’t offer details such as how big the service areas would be in Austin or the Bay Area. By contrast, Alphabet-owned Waymo has been offering rides without safety monitors in the San Francisco area since 2022, in addition to Los Angeles, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Austin.
The biggest difference between Tesla’s and Waymo’s cars is the hardware. Tesla has gone for a vision-only approach, which relies on video cameras to “see” the world, whereas Waymo’s driverless cabs rely on cameras, lidar and radar. Furthermore, there are multiple redundancy systems in place, including a secondary braking system, independent power backup, and a secondary steering drive motor system with independent controllers and separate power supplies.
Experts have questioned Tesla’s approach, saying it is not enough to ensure the safety of passengers.
That said, both Tesla and Waymo have had their share of problems. In the short time it has been operating in Austin, Texas, Tesla’s robotaxis have been recorded driving on the other side of the road and bumping into parked cars. Meanwhile, Waymo’s taxis blocked traffic because of heavy fog and kept crashing into gates.