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Tesla Robotaxi Rides Without Safety Drivers Start in Austin
Ratio of Vehicles Without Monitors Will Increase Over Time
Tesla Inc. is beginning to offer actual robotaxi rides in Austin, a milestone for the carmaker that launched a service seven months ago with vehicles that have relied on human supervisors sitting in front seats.
CEO Elon Musk touted the development in an X post Jan. 22, sharing a video from an ex-Tesla artificial intelligence engineer. The CEO announced last month that testing without any occupants in the company’s cars was underway.
Tesla’s head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, wrote in a separate post that “a few” of the vehicles in the company’s Robotaxi fleet will be unsupervised. The ratio of vehicles without safety monitors will increase over time, he said.
Musk has increasingly emphasized Tesla’s work with AI and robotaxi ambitions as the company has struggled with declining vehicle sales. While taking customers for rides without human backups on board is likely to boost sentiment about the capability of its driving system, Tesla has reported to regulators that the small fleet of cars operating in the Texas capitol were involved in nine crashes in six months last year.
Tesla’s stock rose to session highs after the post, climbing as much as 4% as of 2:30 p.m. in New York. Shares of Uber Technologies and Lyft Inc. dropped more than 3% in intraday trading before paring declines.
Just started Tesla Robotaxi drives in Austin with no safety monitor in the car.
Congrats to the @Tesla_AI team!
If you’re interested in solving real-world AI, which is likely to lead to AGI imo, join Tesla AI. Solving real-world AI for Optimus will be 100X harder than cars. https://t.co/OnP8gredWD — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 22, 2026
Musk said repeatedly in 2025 that Tesla would offer unsupervised rides before year-end. Other predictions were much further off the mark: In July, he estimated that half the U.S. population might have access to autonomous Tesla rides by the end of the year.
Austin is the only city where Tesla is offering Robotaxi rides. While the company started a taxi service in the San Francisco Bay Area last year, it has yet to apply for a permit to test autonomous vehicles without safety drivers in California.
RELATED: Tesla Faces California Sales Halt Over Marketing of Autopilot
Tesla is lagging behind Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, which started offering driverless rides in the Phoenix area in late 2018. The company also is operating in Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta and Miami.
