Tesla soft launches its robotaxi service in Austin

More like Austin, Taxis: Tesla’s long-awaited robotaxi service went live in the Texas state capital yesterday.

It’ll be a slow rollout, according to CEO Elon Musk, who says the company is being “super paranoid about safety.”

• Initially, 10 autonomous Model Y’s will offer rides only to select influencers and Tesla employees within a geofenced area and in certain weather conditions.
• Each self-steering car has a human chaperone inside the vehicle, and is overseen by a remote operator who can intervene in case of an emergency.

Should all go well, Tesla plans to scale its fleet up to thousands of cars, with expansion to LA and San Francisco soon following, Musk told CNBC.

But…Tesla’s opps (regulators) are lurking. Texas Gov. Greg Abbot (R) on Friday signed a new law regulating autonomous vehicles, while the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating four crashes involving Tesla's FSD system.

A lot is at stake: Tesla has staked its future on robotaxis and AI, but is lagging behind self-driving competitors like the Alphabet-owned Waymo (another opp), which is making 250,000+ paid, unsupervised robotaxi trips per week across LA, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Austin. The Musk-led company is betting it can catch up quickly by leveraging its existing network of Teslas on the road and the driving data that comes along with it, as well as by utilizing a more cost-effective, camera-first approach as opposed to the pricey, sensor-and-cameras approach guiding competitors’ cars.