A Tesla robotaxi in Austin, Texas, on June 22. (Tim Goessman\/Bloomberg)<\/p>\n
\n February 17, 2026 4:00 PM, EST<\/p>\n
Tesla Inc.\u2019s robotaxis have been involved in over a dozen crashes in Austin since service began, according to reports the carmaker has made to regulators.<\/p>\n
The electric vehicle maker has said its nascent robotaxi business has been involved in 14 crash incidents in about eight months, according to data sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. A\u00a0federal order<\/a>\u00a0requires carmakers to report when automated driving systems are involved in certain crashes.\u00a0\n \t \t\t<\/p>\n Tesla\u00a0<\/a>launched<\/a>\u00a0its limited robotaxi service in Austin in June with about a dozen cars accompanied by human safety monitors, and has slowly increased the fleet. Its first crash happened in July, according to the\u00a0standing order<\/a>, with the company reporting at the time that the incident only involved property damage.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Tesla submitted another incident report for that crash in December adding information that the accident had led to minor injuries and hospitalization. Another incident, also from July, also caused minor injuries.\u00a0\n \t\t<\/p>\n In January, Tesla\u2019s latest report shows five new incidents that occurred that month and in December. One of the January incidents included a crash between a stopped robotaxi and an Austin city bus. There were two incidents in which a robotaxi backed into objects in parking lots.<\/p>\n After tests in December, Tesla began offering driverless rides<\/a> without any safety monitor in the car in \u201ca few\u201d vehicles in its Austin fleet in January. It was not immediately clear if any of the incidents reported involved vehicles without safety monitors.<\/p>\n Information is limited for all of Tesla\u2019s incidents and, unlike competitors, Tesla redacts narrative descriptions. The vast majority of its incident reports just cited property damage.<\/p>\n Austin remains the only city where Tesla is offering robotaxi rides. The company launched a service on the same app, in the San Francisco Bay Area last year, but those trips use human drivers and is more akin to Uber.<\/p>\n Tesla CEO Elon Musk has increasingly bet the carmaker\u2019s future on autonomy and robotics as the core EV business has\u00a0struggled<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tesla has not disclosed how large its Austin robotaxi fleet is. In January, Musk said that between Austin and the Bay Area, there were 500 rideshare vehicles.<\/p>\n Competitor, Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Waymo, which operates about 2,500 vehicles in Phoenix, San Francisco, Austin, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Miami, and also tests autonomously in other locations, has reported hundreds of incidents since June. This includes about 50 incidents in Austin, where it operates\u00a0about 200 vehicles<\/a>\u00a0on the Uber app.<\/p>\n