Tesla’s Robotaxi Service Hits the Road in Austin, With Riders Sharing Their Experiences

Tesla’s robotaxi service kicked off in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, with the cars picking up paying passengers without a driver behind the wheel for the first time. 

“The @Tesla_AI robotaxi launch begins in Austin this afternoon with customers paying a $4.20 flat fee!” Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted to X on Sunday. Earlier this month, Musk had said Tesla’s robotaxi service would “tentatively” launch June 22, and indeed it did. 

In another Sunday post on X, Musk applauded the Tesla software and chip design teams, calling the robotaxi service the “culmination of a decade of hard work” and noting that “Both the AI chip and software teams were built from scratch within Tesla.”

A select group of influencers got to take the new self-driving service for a spin aboard Tesla’s Model Y vehicles, in a limited area of Austin. The robotaxi service will start by using Tesla’s existing vehicles before the company eventually launches its purpose-built Cybercab vehicle, which has no steering wheel or pedals. Musk has said production on that vehicle would kick off “before 2027.”

Tesla reposted a handful of rider experiences in Austin, showing passengers climbing aboard and getting dropped off, and the vehicle navigating roads and speed bumps and dodging pedestrians. The videos show an employee sitting in the passenger seat to ensure everything’s running smoothly, but no one in the driver’s seat. 

In the leadup to the Austin launch, Tesla began testing its self-driving service with employees in the San Francisco Bay Area with a safety driver on board. In May, Musk posted on X that “for the past several days, Tesla has been testing self-driving Model Y cars (no one in driver’s seat) on Austin public streets with no incidents.” 

Texas is an appealing location to launch a self-driving service because of its minimal rules surrounding driverless vehicles. But on Friday, Governor Greg Abbott signed legislation requiring autonomous vehicle services to get a state permit before operating. The law goes into effect on Sept. 1. 

Tesla joins other self-driving companies already operating in Austin; Alphabet-owned Waymo conducts driverless rides there through a partnership with Uber, while Amazon-owned Zoox drives its test fleet in the city.