{"id":424593,"date":"2026-01-23T07:54:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T07:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/424593\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T07:54:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T07:54:17","slug":"tesla-launches-robotaxi-rides-in-austin-with-no-human-safety-driver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/424593\/","title":{"rendered":"Tesla launches robotaxi rides in Austin with no human safety driver"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tesla is offering passengers robotaxi rides in Austin without a human safety driver in the front seat.<\/p>\n

CEO Elon Musk<\/a> on Thursday posted on X, his social media platform: \u201cJust started Tesla Robotaxi drives in Austin with no safety monitor in the car. Congrats to the Tesla AI team!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He then made a recruitment pitch for engineers interested in \u201csolving real-world AI,\u201d which he says will \u201clikely lead to AGI\u201d to join the Tesla AI team.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The automaker launched its robotaxis in the Texas city last June<\/a> in a limited deployment with a safety operator in the front passenger seat. Tesla initially offered those first rides to influencers and handpicked customers.\u00a0In December, Tesla began testing its robotaxis in Austin<\/a> without a safety driver in the front seat \u2014 a precaution in case the vehicle needs a human to take over.<\/p>\n

Not all of Tesla\u2019s fleet in Austin will be fully driverless. Per Tesla\u2019s AI lead Ashok Elluswamy<\/a>, the company will be \u201cstarting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors, and the ratio will increase over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tesla is charging for the rides, according to one rider <\/a>who posted on X. There also appears to be a chase car following the driverless vehicles. <\/p>\n

Some of Tesla\u2019s rivals, like Zoox and Waymo, did not immediately charge for driverless rides upon initial deployment.<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

TechCrunch has attempted to reach out to Tesla for clarification. <\/p>\n

The article has been updated to reflect new information, including that Tesla is charging for the rides. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tesla is offering passengers robotaxi rides in Austin without a human safety driver in the front seat. CEO…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28,11,15879,1019,60404],"class_list":["post-424593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-elon-musk","tag-in-brief","tag-tesla","tag-tesla-robotaxi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}