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.
So far Tesla seems to be testing this with employees and with supervised FSD and doubling down on an Austin launch in June.
FAQ
1. Does it have to be a public launch?
Yes, but we won't quibble about waitlists. As long as even 10 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.
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 any kind of incident. If there's a backup driver we're going to presume that it's because interventions are still needed, even if rarely. But see FAQ 7 for a gray area here.
4. What if it's only available for certain fixed routes?
That would resolve NO. It has to be available on unrestricted public roads 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. We'll discuss in the comments how to handle this case but I'm leaning NO because another take on 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.
So I think it would be a huge scandal if Tesla used tele-operation and it isn't likely.
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.]
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"It has to be available on unrestricted public roads and you have to be able to choose an arbitrary destination. I.e., it has to count as a taxi service." <-- What if it's available in some areas but blacklisted in certain areas, e.g. no highway driving or not on dirt roads etc?
@KJW_01294 Good question, and let me know if you have strong opinions before we make the answer official. My thinking so far is that we want to pick a threshold that allows for "reasonable" restrictions. No dirt roads, sure, that's not much of a restriction and we can presume it would be for mundane reasons, not really about limitations on the car's ability to drive autonomously. Highways is a tougher call. Highways are actually easier for the AI but the consequences of a mistake are greater.
One idea for where to draw this line: If you can still get to any Uber/Lyftable destination within the region (see FAQ5) and the transit time is within 20% of a Waymo, it counts.
If no one has objections or suggested refinements to that, I'll add it to the FAQ.
I said we'd discuss in the comments any gray areas with level 3 autonomy. Since "level 4" is in the title, I'm now thinking we should draw a hard line here. Are people ok with that? I'm worried about something that's close enough to level 4 that it feels spiritually like a YES, especially if true level 4 follows soon after. But I suppose we've already given a fair bit of leeway on the timing. So probably best to keep things simple with a bright line at level 4. (Review of the autonomy levels.)
This isn't official until I update the FAQ though. Speak now or forever hold your peace!
@dreev That sounds fair and unlikely to happen anyway. I do beg you not to resolve right away if robotaxis launch until we get real information on how teleoperators are being used. I am very much expecting them to launch on time but using teleoperators as safety drivers, which I'm glad you agree isn't level 4.
@WrongoPhD Sounds good. Now I'm wondering, given network latency, is a remote human operator worse than drunk driving?
I'm any case, we agree Waymo is at level 4, right? And Tesla will get some benefit of the doubt if they seem to have hit parity with Waymo?
@dreev I definitely agree that Waymo is level 4. For me, the key difference is Waymo knows when they need to ask for help versus a teleoperator watching all the time always ready to instantly take over, which is what I anticipate for Tesla.
I do understand at some point you'll have to resolve this market giving Tesla the benefit of the doubt, but I'm betting that if we wait a few months after launch, the fact that they don't have a serious L4 contender win be revealed somehow, either through an accident or a flimsy excuse to halt the robotaxi launch.
I think the robotaxi launch in Texas is going to be the equivalent of Theranos successfully being able to run an ANA blood test despite having otherwise garbage technology.
@WrongoPhD Bold prediction! And we should totally have additional markets. I'm not opposed to leaving this market open longer (not changing the the Aug 31 deadline for the launch itself, of course) until we're sure Tesla hasn't cheated. Another market on that would be great, actually. We could resolve this market as soon as the "did Tesla cheat?" market has sufficiently low probability.
I don't think we'll know immediately if teleoperators are being used. Unlike you, I expect they WILL be used but the extent they're being used will be hidden. I fully expect Tesla will try to act like their teleoperators are just like Waymos when in fact they'll have a person watching a car constantly taking on the role of a safety driver just behind closed doors. My personal prediction is Tesla won't reveal much about teleoperators until they skapegoat an accident on one.
@WrongoPhD I don't think I'm at quite that level of cynicism but we should absolutely have a separate market about that if you're game to create it?
@WrongoPhD I agree this is the most likely scenario. The financial incentive for Musk to launch robotaxi services without in-car safety drivers before the technology is at a safety level comparable to Waymo is immense.
@dreev Have you seen this article? At the very least, there is discussion of training the current in-car safety drivers to work remotely.
It's hard to come up with good resolution criteria, though, for information being concealed. Even waymo, which has been much more transparent, has not released their intervention rate as far as I am aware.
@WrongoPhD Thanks! Archived copy of that article:
It says that the backup drivers are making "critical interventions" every so many days, which Tesla is trying to spin as being... almost good enough for unsupervised FSD? Maybe we also want a market for if they pull an Uber with this.
@TP8ac2 do we know how often remote operators take over Waymo rides? Maybe an expectation that Tesla remote operators at most take over in twice as many rides (as percentage of total rides) as Waymo remote staff would be a good rule?
[EDIT: I turned my answer here into FAQ8 in the market description; thanks for asking it!]