Elon Musk interviews on CNBC from the Tesla Headquarters in Texas.
CNBC
Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the company will have robotaxis on the streets of Austin, Texas by the end of June.
In an interview with CNBC‘s David Faber on Tuesday at the company’s headquarters in Austin, Musk said Tesla aims to bring its robotaxis to Los Angeles and San Francisco following the planned Austin debut.
Musk said the robotaxi service will start with about 10 vehicles in Austin, and rapidly expand to thousands of vehicles should the launch go well with no incidents.
Since 2016, Musk has been promising Tesla investors, customers and fans that the company is about a year away from delivering a self-driving car that’s capable of driving passengers around safely without human interventions, or a human at the steering wheel.
To start, Tesla has said its robotaxis will be Model Y vehicles equipped with a forthcoming version of FSD (full self driving) known as FSD Unsupervised.
Alphabet’s Waymo is already operating commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in various U.S. markets. On a recent earnings call, Alphabet said Waymo already conducts 250,000 paid trips per week.
Musk said Tesla “will geofence” its robotaxis in Austin to start, meaning the company will limit where those Model Y vehicles can drive. But there won’t be a human safety driver in the cars, Musk promised.
Tesla employees will be remotely monitoring the fleet, he said.
“We’ll be watching what the cars are doing very carefully and as confidence grows, less of that will be needed,” Musk said.
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