Last month, Tesla invited users to experience its driverless ride-hailing cars on public roads in Austin, Texas, in an initial trial with pricing of each trip costing $US4.20 before expanding the area to a much larger service. Shortly after, the company expanded into the San Francisco Bay Area in California.
Now, the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, has said that the Austin service will have open access as of next month, allowing more people to experience the Robotaxi service for the first time.
In a reply to a Robotaxi observer asking about the restrictions around the Robotaxi service access, Musk replied with an update: “It will be open access next month”.
Since expanding the service area in Austin and launching initially in California, the Tesla Robotaxi team is also looking at other markets in which it’s expected to be operating shortly.
Reports from last month also showed that Tesla was making progress in Arizona, with the state’s Department of Transportation confirming that Tesla’s Robotaxi approvals were in the works.
Currently, Waymo operates a 24/7 self-driving ride-hailing service there with a service area of around 800 square kilometres in Phoenix, Arizona.
Tesla’s pace of expansion of its trial service is going at a much faster rate than expected, with the general public having access to the service in just over two months of its initial launch.
Tesla’s Robotaxi service has ensured that existing operators such as Waymo are expanding their services too. Now that pubic rides aren’t too far away, the Robotaxi will compete directly with these other operators.
This update also comes within a month of Tesla’s last earnings call, where Musk shared the company’s internal goal of having the Robotaxi service available to half of the US’s population by the end of 2025.
With that goal in mind, Tesla would need thousands of Robotaxis across multiple states before any future international markets in the coming months.
We look forward to seeing how this rollout pushes competition in the US as well as the expected international expansion of the service in 2026. It’d be fascinating to see what the general public’s feedback is around the Robotaxi service after they experience it in the coming months.
Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.