Billionaire Elon Musk said he hopes to launch a service that will allow people to call Tesla self-driving cars in California and Texas in 2025, and claims that his company is already testing this service with employees, UNN reports citing TechCrunch.
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The comments, made Wednesday at Tesla's third-quarter earnings conference call, go further than what Musk promised two weeks ago at the Cybercab presentation. On that stage, Musk promised that Model 3 and Model Y owners would be able to use an "unsupervised" version of Tesla's Full Self-Driving software in California and Texas. But he did not mention a taxi network, despite the fact that Tesla has been teasing this idea for years, the publication writes.
It is unclear whether Tesla needs to obtain a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to conduct the tests, which Elon Musk said his company is already conducting.
David Lau, Tesla's vice president of software, said during a phone call that the cars that employees called in had drivers to ensure safety. And to be clear, no Tesla car can currently drive itself without human intervention.
Today, Tesla's Full Self-Driving, or FSD, software is considered an advanced driver assistance system - not an autonomous driving system like the one Waymo uses in its Robotax. FSD offers some automated features that are available on highways and city streets, but the system still requires the driver's attention and control.
Musk said during the call that Tesla will go through the proper regulatory approval process in California before opening such a service to ordinary consumers, although he complained about bureaucratic red tape and said he expects a smoother process in his home state of Texas. The regulatory process in California for launching a commercial robotaxi service has several layers that require approval from the Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Public Utilities Commission. Waymo is the only company authorized to operate a commercial driverless robotaxi service in San Francisco.
Musk also suggested that Tesla could launch the service in other states by the end of next year.
As the publication notes, these statements come after years of over-promising by Musk about Tesla's ability to develop software that can autonomously drive cars. And Musk acknowledged on Wednesday that cars equipped with what Tesla calls Hardware 3, which it began building into its electric vehicles in 2019, may not eventually be able to drive themselves. If Tesla ever gets to the point where its software can drive vehicles unattended and it doesn't run on Hardware 3, Musk has promised to replace the hardware at no cost to owners.