The service allows anyone within some area (possibly a restricted area, possibly not) to hail an autonomous Tesla. They are either not able to or not required to drive it themselves.
Dec 3, 7:12pm: Will Tesla provide an autonomous driving service before the end of 2026 → Will Tesla provide (or be included in) an autonomous ride-hailing service before the end of 2026
Update 2026-01-23 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The market will not resolve YES until the service has a larger number of cars operating in the area. A small pilot program where most hail attempts result in a safety driver does not meet the resolution requirements for an autonomous service.
Update 2026-01-24 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): For the market to resolve YES, wait times must stay under 20 minutes over a practically broad area to count as the service being available.
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I'm going to hold off on resolving this until the number of cars in either city is larger, just in case there's an incident and they have to roll it back. It's currently a small number of cars, in most cases if you try to hail one you'll get one with a safety driver, so doesn't really meet the requirements.
And like, this tracker currently says service is currently fully unavailable https://robotaxitracker.com/wait-times?area=austin it's available again. Maybe it was just raining or something) availability has generally been more non than high since people started calling for this to resolve. It is not actually available irl.
@makoyass People have been taking (supervised) rides today. The service is up. https://x.com/DavidMoss/status/2014768577593676251
@makoyass it might be helpful to clarify the resolution criteria so that we know how many driverless cars must be available and what fraction of all hailed rides must be driverless in order to resolve YES. that would help us bet accurately
@mndrix does it really matter? If it's real, they'll blow past arguably launched for a stupid definition of launched to definitely launched for all practical intents in less than 2 months.
(briefly wondered if this could actually not be the case as a result of the launch being so broadly distributed over all cities due to a concave demand curves that availability stays low everywhere for years, but they probably wont do that. They want to be the app through which the ride is hailed, but no one will check their app if availability is unreliable, so they'll want to reach critical mass in one city before moving on to the next.)
@makoyass I estimate 20% chance this stays small all year, depending on incident numbers and march of 9s progress. Driverless delivery and safety riders have both stayed at status quo for longer than many expected. Since 3-4 non-Tesla riders doesn't count for this market, I'd like to know how many does count so that I can bid accordingly.
@mndrix In that case I would say they haven't really launched a service.
Wait times are going to need to stay under 20 minutes over a practically broad area to count as available.
@makoyass iny area wait time for Uber do not always stay under 20 minutes. With your criteria Uber doesn't count as available then
@Berg If it's like, usually over 20 minutes, it's at least not very available. Sounds like they should pay their drivers more.
I think this should resolve YES. As of January 22, 2026, Tesla has robotaxis available to the public in Austin, TX without a driver or safety monitor in the vehicle: https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/22/tesla-launches-robotaxi-rides-in-austin-with-no-human-safety-driver/
@mndrix it depends on what the market creator intended by "allows anyone within some area.” Tesla stills says they are not letting "anyone" get a ride an in unserpervised taxi, but it does allow some preselected passengers to do so.
@WrongoPhD "Tesla stills says they are not letting "anyone" get a ride an in unserpervised taxi, but it does allow some preselected passengers to do so."
What's the basis for this? Where is this Tesla announcement?
@MarkosGiannopoulos My bad. Tesla did not officially announce this. Nevertheless, so far we've only seen a Tesla engineer/promoter take an unsupervised ride. It should be clear if this is open to everyone or just select Tesla insiders soon.
@WrongoPhD The first video posted was from an ex-Tesla employee (not a current employee). There are several other videos from paying customers already from other people on Twitter. In general, service is limited https://robotaxitracker.com/
@MarkosGiannopoulos @makoyass
In case this hasn't been established
https://assets-ir.tesla.com/tesla-contents/IR/TSLA-Q4-2025-Update.pdf
page 10
"Automotive and Other Software The Robotaxi iOS app no longer has a waitlist in the areas we serve."
I would suggest that anyone can buy an apple iphone if they really want to in order to get access to robotaxis. Some people might not want to get an iphone but that is a different thing, most people in US could if they wanted to. So I think this should suffice for general availability for people in the area that might want to use the service and no waitlist.
Elon has once again, for iirc the 7th year running, claimed to believe that full self driving is less than a year away. https://www.youtube.com/live/3MVIWeU36ZY?feature=share&t=1769
Personally I learned he's uh unreliable about this like 5 years ago, and decided it would probably actually land in 2025, and I still feel that way.
