Your Tesla could become a taxi as early as next year, picking up passengers and earning money during the hours you are not driving it. Tesla, the electric-vehicle maker led by Chief Executive Elon Musk, said it aims to enable unsupervised Full Self-Driving on customer-owned vehicles as soon as the second quarter of next year.
Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla's vice president of autopilot software, said on the 21st that the self-driving software in the Cybercab and the Model Y is the same. "Around Q2 next year, we should be able to turn on unsupervised FSD for some customer-owned vehicles, and they could join the robotaxi fleet," he said on the company's third-quarter earnings call.
Tesla's current FSD is a supervised system that requires drivers to watch the road and take over in unexpected situations. The company says that restriction will soon be lifted. Once FSD is upgraded, Tesla owners would be able to let their cars pick up passengers like taxis and generate income while the vehicles sit idle.
Musk said the number of robotaxis operating in Austin, Texas, has risen tenfold since the service launched a month ago. Looking at cumulative mileage on a weekly chart, he said, produces a "wow" reaction. Tesla's robotaxis had logged close to 2 million miles, or about 3.2 million kilometers, as of September.
Elluswamy said the robotaxi service will expand to more cities, starting with Dallas next month. Tesla currently runs robotaxis in five cities: Austin, Houston, Orlando, Tampa and Miami.
Waymo Logs 500,000 Weekly Rides While Tesla Awaits California Permit
Waymo, the self-driving unit of Google parent Alphabet, leads the robotaxi market. It operates in more than 10 U.S. cities and records more than 500,000 paid rides a week. The company runs a fleet of about 4,000 vehicles and provides stable service in major cities including Phoenix and San Francisco. It is also pushing aggressively into overseas markets such as Britain, Germany, Japan and Singapore.
Chinese companies are gaining ground. Pony.ai, a Chinese autonomous-driving startup, has commercialized robotaxis in several Chinese cities and is expanding into Europe. Its strategy relies on partnerships with ride-hailing platforms such as Uber, and it is running tests in major European cities including Manchester, England. Baidu, China's largest search engine operator, offers robotaxi service under the Apollo Go brand in 27 Chinese cities and holds a dominant market share.
As a latecomer, Tesla must clear regulatory approvals and earn trust on safety to compete with the established leaders. Chinese operators are scaling up their fleets and expanding abroad quickly. Tesla, meanwhile, has yet to obtain the permit needed to run autonomous ride-hailing in California, the symbolic market for the robotaxi business. Waymo also relies on lidar and radar alongside cameras, while Tesla's approach centers on large-scale vehicle data and cameras. The Associated Press noted that Tesla will have to prove the safety of its camera-centric system to catch up with Waymo.
Tesla has not won approval for drivers to use its partially automated software in most European Union countries, the AP reported, adding that even if the technology works well, the company faces the challenge of convincing people it is safe. In a Pew Research Center survey conducted in February, seven in 10 U.S. adults said they would be "not too comfortable" or "not at all comfortable" riding in a self-driving vehicle.
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