Elon Musk has been very explicit in promising a robotaxi launch in Austin in June with unsupervised full self-driving (FSD). We'll give him some leeway on the timing and say this counts as a YES if it happens by the end of August.
As of April 2025, Tesla seems to be testing this with employees and with supervised FSD and doubling down on the public Austin launch.
PS: A big monkey wrench no one anticipated when we created this market is how to treat the passenger-seat safety monitors. See FAQ9 for how we're trying to handle that in a principled way. Tesla is very polarizing and I know it's "obvious" to one side that safety monitors = "supervised" and that it's equally obvious to the other side that the driver's seat being empty is what matters. I can't emphasize enough how not obvious any of this is. At least so far, speaking now in August 2025.
FAQ
1. Does it have to be a public launch?
Yes, but we won't quibble about waitlists. As long as even 10 non-handpicked members of the public have used the service by the end of August, that's a YES. Also if there's a waitlist, anyone has to be able to get on it and there has to be intent to scale up. In other words, Tesla robotaxis have to be actually becoming a thing, with summer 2025 as when it started.
If it's invite-only and Tesla is hand-picking people, that's not a public launch. If it's viral-style invites with exponential growth from the start, that's likely to be within the spirit of a public launch.
A potential litmus test is whether serious journalists and Tesla haters end up able to try the service.
2. What if there's a human backup driver in the driver's seat?
This importantly does not count. That's supervised FSD.
3. But what if the backup driver never actually intervenes?
Compare to Waymo, which goes millions of miles between [injury-causing] incidents. If there's a backup driver we're going to presume that it's because interventions are still needed, even if rarely.
4. What if it's only available for certain fixed routes?
That would resolve NO. It has to be available on unrestricted public roads [restrictions like no highways is ok] and you have to be able to choose an arbitrary destination. I.e., it has to count as a taxi service.
5. What if it's only available in a certain neighborhood?
This we'll allow. It just has to be a big enough neighborhood that it makes sense to use a taxi. Basically anything that isn't a drastic restriction of the environment.
6. What if they drop the robotaxi part but roll out unsupervised FSD to Tesla owners?
This is unlikely but if this were level 4+ autonomy where you could send your car by itself to pick up a friend, we'd call that a YES per the spirit of the question.
7. What about level 3 autonomy?
Level 3 means you don't have to actively supervise the driving (like you can read a book in the driver's seat) as long as you're available to immediately take over when the car beeps at you. This would be tantalizingly close and a very big deal but is ultimately a NO. My reason to be picky about this is that a big part of the spirit of the question is whether Tesla will catch up to Waymo, technologically if not in scale at first.
8. What about tele-operation?
The short answer is that that's not level 4 autonomy so that would resolve NO for this market. This is a common misconception about Waymo's phone-a-human feature. It's not remotely (ha) like a human with a VR headset steering and braking. If that ever happened it would count as a disengagement and have to be reported. See Waymo's blog post with examples and screencaps of the cars needing remote assistance.
To get technical about the boundary between a remote human giving guidance to the car vs remotely operating it, grep "remote assistance" in Waymo's advice letter filed with the California Public Utilities Commission last month. Excerpt:
The Waymo AV [autonomous vehicle] sometimes reaches out to Waymo Remote Assistance for additional information to contextualize its environment. The Waymo Remote Assistance team supports the Waymo AV with information and suggestions [...] Assistance is designed to be provided quickly - in a mater of seconds - to help get the Waymo AV on its way with minimal delay. For a majority of requests that the Waymo AV makes during everyday driving, the Waymo AV is able to proceed driving autonomously on its own. In very limited circumstances such as to facilitate movement of the AV out of a freeway lane onto an adjacent shoulder, if possible, our Event Response agents are able to remotely move the Waymo AV under strict parameters, including at a very low speed over a very short distance.
Tentatively, Tesla needs to meet the bar for autonomy that Waymo has set. But if there are edge cases where Tesla is close enough in spirit, we can debate that in the comments.
9. What about human safety monitors in the passenger seat?
Oh geez, it's like Elon Musk is trolling us to maximize the ambiguity of these market resolutions. Tentatively (we'll keep discussing in the comments) my verdict on this question depends on whether the human safety monitor has to be eyes-on-the-road the whole time with their finger on a kill switch or emergency brake. If so, I believe that's still level 2 autonomy. Or sub-4 in any case.
See also FAQ3 for why this matters even if a kill switch is never actually used. We need there not only to be no actual disengagements but no counterfactual disengagements. Like imagine that these robotaxis would totally mow down a kid who ran into the road. That would mean a safety monitor with an emergency brake is necessary, even if no kids happen to jump in front of any robotaxis before this market closes. Waymo, per the definition of level 4 autonomy, does not have that kind of supervised self-driving.
10. Will we ultimately trust Tesla if it reports it's genuinely level 4?
I want to avoid this since I don't think Tesla has exactly earned our trust on this. I believe the truth will come out if we wait long enough, so that's what I'll be inclined to do. If the truth seems impossible for us to ascertain, we can consider resolve-to-PROB.
11. Will we trust government certification that it's level 4?
Yes, I think this is the right standard. Elon Musk said on 2025-07-09 that Tesla was waiting on regulatory approval for robotaxis in California and expected to launch in the Bay Area "in a month or two". I'm not sure what such approval implies about autonomy level but I expect it to be evidence in favor. (And if it starts to look like Musk was bullshitting, that would be evidence against.)
12. What if it's still ambiguous on August 31?
Then we'll extend the market close. The deadline for Tesla to meet the criteria for a launch is August 31 regardless. We just may need more time to determine, in retrospect, whether it counted by then. I suspect that with enough hindsight the ambiguity will resolve. Note in particular FAQ1 which says that Tesla robotaxis have to be becoming a thing (what "a thing" is is TBD but something about ubiquity and availability) with summer 2025 as when it started. Basically, we may need to look back on summer 2025 and decide whether that was a controlled demo, done before they actually had level 4 autonomy, or whether they had it and just were scaling up slowing and cautiously at first.
Ask more clarifying questions! I'll be super transparent about my thinking and will make sure the resolution is fair if I have a conflict of interest due to my position in this market.
[Ignore any auto-generated clarifications below this line. I'll add to the FAQ as needed.]
Update 2025-08-06 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator has confirmed that the public launch criteria has been met based on the journalist/Tesla-hater litmus test from FAQ1.
Key clarification on Level 4 autonomy requirements:
Even one real-time intervention at driving speed is disqualifying for L4
Counterfactual interventions also disqualify - if human supervision is needed for emergency situations (like hitting emergency brake if a child runs into road), this is not L4 even if such situations don't actually occur
The service must demonstrate true autonomy without requiring human safety monitors to be ready to intervene
Update 2025-08-22 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): - Human supervision may not automatically disqualify: If safety monitors are present but are plausibly redundant, Tesla can still count as L4.
Evidence standard: Tesla must provide disengagement statistics showing a per‑mile disengagement rate lower than Waymo’s driverless crash rate, implying unsupervised safety at least as good.
Data requirement: This needs substantial mileage and disclosed data; a few thousand miles with zero incidents is not sufficient.
Update 2025-08-23 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): - Literally unsupervised is required by Aug 31.
If passenger-seat safety monitors have their finger on an emergency-stop/kill switch, that counts as supervision. Unless those monitors are removed by Aug 31, the market will resolve NO.
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@dreev For consideration: Waymo reported (not validated) incidents on the official Texas site, 19 for June-July https://www.austintexas.gov/page/autonomous-vehicles
Tesla: 1
Waymo has about 100 cars as of May 2025 in Austin https://s23.q4cdn.com/407969754/files/doc_events/2025/May/07/uber-q1-25-earnings-call-transcript.pdf
Duplicate
@WrongoPhD Are you suggesting that potentially half of their initial 10-15 cars were damaged, and now they are back to 7-8? The message is straightforward: yesterday, they expanded both their operational area and the number of cars in operation.
Tesla announced a certain number of miles on the Q2 earnings call, which was about 4 weeks after the launch date. The low number does not have to be just about the number of cars, but also operating hours and the number of people they gave access to.
@MarkosGiannopoulos "The low number does not have to be just about the number of cars, but also operating hours and the number of people they gave access to. "
This is exactly my point. The low number of miles suggests that despite having a fleet of 11 cars, most were not in operation most of the time. Rephrased, probably only some of the cars were available.
I don't think it's obvious that increasing the "cars available" means increasing the fleet size. It could also mean the cars they do have will be available for more hours. The phrasing is confusing, and it's weird to give a specific number change of area covered (173 sq miles) but a confusing percentage increase for cars availability.
@WrongoPhD it seems you don’t trust anything Tesla says so you end up nitpicking on the definition of “available”.
@uair01 Yeah, if they're doing anything even remotely (haha) like that then that wouldn't be level 4 autonomy. See https://agifriday.substack.com/p/waymo for the Waymo comparison.
Both of the last 2 robotaxi videos on YT show safety driver thumbs on the door button (speculated to be an emergency stop button when robotaxi active). If the speculation is correct, and nothing has changed since the YT vids were recorded, then based on the resolution criteria for this market, I think this means we need to see evidence of a stop to this behaviour in the next 9 days?
https://youtu.be/MX-G0cmnUPI?si=uMqLYu-hbKk0DH4k&t=25
https://youtu.be/RnrgVkoj334?si=rSGRdnR4WOkFR8YK&t=6
@angusb I can't tell much from those videos. As Tesla scales this up, at some point that button may actually get used, if that's what the button is, and then we'd know for sure.
"What's wrong with an extra layer of safety?"
Nothing, but the benchmark we're using for level 4 autonomy is Waymo. Tesla might be there! There are two ways to know: (1) Humans being out of the real-time safety loop, as they are for Waymo. (2) Tesla having a rate of human intervention on par with Waymo's actual crash rate. For the latter, it'll take way more miles from Tesla.
"Doesn't Tesla have billions of miles of data from FSD in private cars?"
Yes but the intervention rate, though steadily going down, is not near Waymo's incident rate.
@dreev @angusb Here is confirmation that the door opening button is being used as an emergency stop
https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=815&v=OVqIkyDtxxo&feature=youtu.be
@dreev thanks for the response
> (2) Tesla having a rate of human intervention on par with Waymo's actual crash rate. For the latter, it'll take way more miles from Tesla.
...are you saying that even if the thumb door button behaviour persists (and we accept it's an emergency stop button), this could still resolve YES if we eventually get data that interventions were as low or lower than Waymo's? Don't FAQ 3 + 9 override this?
@angusb Ah, yes, I don't mean to alter the criteria. This evidence of an emergency stop button should make this market price fall. And I think it's very unlikely that data will materialize vindicating Tesla on this. Just that for the letter and spirit to fully match, we're presuming Tesla wouldn't use this supervision if they could safely do it unsupervised.
In any case, you're right. Literally unsupervised is baked into the resolution criteria here. So if this is correct that the safety monitors have their finger on an emergency stop button, they'll need to be gone by August 31 or we're looking at an automatic NO.
Tesla now has a rideshare license in Texas https://archive.is/i6bKM
They also need a permit from the Texas DMV as of September 1st.
Another expansion in Austin https://x.com/JoeTegtmeyer/status/1951980780462247969
No information on the number of cars.
@MarkosGiannopoulos The number of miles driven is really the key information. The 7k miles in the first 30 days make it questionable that they were even running all 11 cars all the time unless each car really was only driving 21 miles a day.
@WrongoPhD True, they are at a small scale for now.
This specific market does not call for any big numbers, though ("As long as even 10 non-handpicked members of the public have used the service by the end of August, that's a YES"). Thoughts @dreev ?
I suppose a bigger number of miles (such as 50-100K miles over 3 months) combined with a very low number of safety monitor interventions would allow a "Yes" resolution (e.g. the service is launched and the car drives itself). Or not?
@MarkosGiannopoulos From the FAQ: "Tentatively (we'll keep discussing in the comments) my verdict on this question depends on whether the human safety monitor has to be eyes-on-the-road the whole time with their finger on a kill switch or emergency brake. If so, I believe that's still level 2 autonomy. Or sub-4 in any case."
This is still very clearly eyes on. We're never going to have actual disengagement data because Tesla is not going to release it, but a safety driver stopping the car from running the tracks as a train approachs alone is enough to show it's an eyes-on system even if that were the only intervention in 7k miles, and we know that it wasn't.
@WrongoPhD "safety driver stopping the car from running the tracks as a train approaches" - has this happened?
@MarkosGiannopoulos Unfortunately it's not caught on tape but this Tesla influencer has a long history of supporting Tesla and definitely seems credible to me. The original clip is 17 minutes long but the reddit post has the bit you actually want to see.
https://x.com/JoeTegtmeyer/status/1944769604082938228
@WrongoPhD So, in your view, a single intervention incident means that Tesla does not have an autonomous system?
@MarkosGiannopoulos In my view if a car cannot drive 7k miles without trying to drive past the closing barriers of a railroad track, it is not an "eyes off" system.
Y'all convinced me that we've met the criteria for public launch, per the journalist/Tesla-hater litmus test. There's still the clause in FAQ1 about scaling up continuously, if not quickly. But it wouldn't make sense for that to fail to happen if they've cracked level 4 autonomy.
I do think even one real-time / at-driving-speed intervention is disqualifying for L4. In fact, it doesn't take a single actual intervention -- just a counterfactual one. Like if robotaxis need human supervision to hit the emergency brake in case a kid runs into the road, that's not L4 -- even if no kids happen to run into the road.
PS: I think purging "clearly" and "obviously" from our vocabularies will improve the discourse. Arguments with those words can feel like rhetorical brute force, implying derision of any possible disagreement.
@dreev So, since driverless Waymo cars have gotten into accidents, does that mean that Waymo is not at L4?
@MarkosGiannopoulos I don't think we need to get all "How many hairs makes a moustache; how many grains of sand make a heap" for this market. FAQ9 nicely spells out that an eyes on system resolved as a no, which is what I believe they currently have. In support of this argument I offer the evidence that there are monitor in the car who constantly are watching the road. The fact that they've had to intervene with the emergency stop button is further evidence above and beyond the threshold established in FAQ9 in favor of this being an eyes on system, which resolves no.
@WrongoPhD @dreev A summary Waymo's timeline
Apr 25, 2017 — First passenger tests with a safety driver
Waymo opens its Early Rider Program in metro Phoenix. Rides include a Waymo test driver behind the wheel at all times.
Nov 7, 2017 — Begins road testing without a safety driver (limited)
Waymo announces its vans are driving on Arizona public roads with nobody in the driver’s seat. Initial use was limited; public rides without a driver weren’t broadly available yet.
Dec 5, 2018 — Commercial service launches with safety drivers
Waymo One launches in Phoenix, but vehicles still have trained drivers behind the wheel for most rides.
Nov 1, 2019 — Select rider-only (no driver) rides start
TechCrunch documents driverless rides for Early Rider members in a geofenced area of Chandler/Mesa/Tempe
It sounds like the description of the market ("The deadline for Tesla to meet the criteria for a launch is August 31 regardless.") is asking for Waymo's 2.5 years to be achieved in 2 months.
@MarkosGiannopoulos Here are my latest thoughts on the seeming contradiction where Waymo counts as level 4 despite crashes but Tesla, with no crashes so far, wouldn't count just because they have human monitors, whether or not the human monitors ever actually intervene.
(Let's call human monitors with the ability to intervene in real time, "supervision". Waymo does not have supervision in that sense.)
The idea is that we don't want to disqualify Tesla for having supervision if it's just out of abundance of caution. But how do we tell if it is? I think the answer is crash and disengagement statistics. If Tesla's disengagement rate is lower than Waymo's crash rate, that's good enough. That way, even if every disengagement was a counterfactual crash, Tesla unsupervised would still be safer than Waymo.
Waymo's thinking is just don't have supervision at all, that way there's no doubt. With supervision, there's a burden of proof that the cars wouldn't fall to an unacceptable level of safety without it.
If we got the disengagement data that showed Tesla unsupervised would be as safe as Waymo (or some other safety threshold?), then we could say Tesla had achieved level 4 autonomy, with the supervision as a redundant extra layer of safety. But Tesla will need way more miles for that. If they're at 0 disengagements or crashes out of mere thousands of miles, that doesn't tell us much yet.
@dreev I am not sure you have directly addressed my comment: It sounds like the description of the market ("The deadline for Tesla to meet the criteria for a launch is August 31, regardless.") is asking for Waymo's 2.5 years to be achieved in 2 months.
Waymo stopped having supervision after spending 2.5 years serving customers with safety drivers.
@MarkosGiannopoulos I guess there two ways to frame that. One is "the skeptics were extremely correct -- as of summer 2025, Tesla is only at the point Waymo was at 2.5 years ago". The other is "the skeptics were all wrong -- Tesla is speedrunning Waymo's process, doing in months what took Waymo years".
Probably the crux is whether Tesla catches up to and overtakes Waymo.
I think this market has been consistent in asking whether Tesla would hit parity with Waymo technologically, if not in scale, this summer. Consider the first paragraph of the market description:
Elon Musk has been very explicit in promising a robotaxi launch in Austin in June with unsupervised full self-driving (FSD). We'll give him some leeway on the timing and say this counts as a YES if it happens by the end of August.
Assuming nothing changes by Sunday night, how do you believe this market should resolve? I'm thinking we should wait to find out for sure if the safety monitors or remote monitors count as supervision.