Get ready for a new era in urban transportation. Tesla is on the verge of launching its highly anticipated robotaxi service, which could hit US streets as early as this year. The service will feature fully autonomous vehicles, no human supervision needed.
Launch Details Emerge
Sources close to Bloomberg say the service will kick off in Austin, Texas. While Tesla hasn’t confirmed a launch date, all signs point to June 12, 2025. This is earlier than initially expected.
Austin is a strategic choice. The city has fewer regulations on autonomous vehicles compared to California. To operate in Texas, vehicles need:
- Valid insurance
- Cameras
- The ability to follow traffic laws
Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, previously announced that the company’s vehicles would start carrying passengers in Austin this June. The goal is to expand the service to other US cities by the end of 2025. A simple software update will make the vehicles fully autonomous.
Unsupervised full self-driving Teslas will be carrying passengers in Austin in June and many cities in America by end of year.
This will enable passenger cars to increase in utility by roughly half an order of magnitude overnight with a software update.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 31, 2025
Testing in Full Swing
Tesla is putting its robotaxis through rigorous testing, with safety drivers and employees behind the wheel. The latest test saw a Model Y cruising through Austin without a driver, although an engineer was present to monitor the vehicle.
The company plans to integrate the robotaxi service into its mobile app, allowing users to request a ride with their phone. Elon Musk showcased the user interface during a conference call, saying, “We believe it’s possible to create a scalable and profitable autonomous business through a vision-based architecture, with end-to-end neural networks trained on millions of miles of real-world data.”
Tesla thinks its software experience is the best in class and plans to seamlessly integrate shared transportation into the app. With the launch date approaching, the only thing left to confirm is the exact timing.