- Tesla released his Robotaxi service “oriented public” this weekend
- The service is currently an issue just by invitation
- The reports suggest that it is still behind Waymo and other rivals
In a surprising turn of events, Tesla has attached to its recent deadlines and actually initiated an autonomous autonomous transport service in Austin, Texas, this weekend.
Although Texas legislators asked Musk to postpone the procedures until he ended and introduced new laws around the totally autonomous taxis, the controversial CEO has advanced anyway.
As a result, the reports are emerging in several social networks that show the first VIP guests who enjoy their Robotaxi Debut experience.
However, this is far from the futuristic stage of Cybercab that Tesla showed in his event ‘We, Robot’ by Hollywood-Spec in October last year, where people to the feast of the cybercradros who were actually operated in a cinema and the humanoid humanoid humanoid served robots for the party attendees, only to discover that they were actually operated.
It is a similar story with the recent effort of Robotaxi de Tesla, since the “fleet” of 10-20 model vehicles and (that some Robotaxi brands look) are strictly limited to a small and relatively without complications of Austin, Texas.
They also only operate between 6 am and 12 am and have a remote operator in the passenger seat to manually verify the identification of passengers and take control in case a problem arises.
The Verge reported that some of Tesla’s without driver vehicles are also followed by ‘Chase’ vehicles, presumably full of engineers ready to jump in case both operators in the car and the remote cannot drive.
Until now, only a select number of invitations has gone to predominantly influential “Pro-Tela”, according to The Verge, with the initial list of test pilots invitations that read as a Who-Who of the Sycope of musk contingent: Recognized Tesla Stock Hyper-Man Merritt that is among those names.
Like the event ‘We, Robot’, this initial launch phase feels very similar to a massive public relations trick, with the company essentially inviting the “general public” (read the creators of Tesla content) for a trip during the very early test phase, instead of during the generalized deployment of a legitimate and paid service.
Why is Waymo ahead
It is impossible to talk about Tesla’s Robotaxi service without mentioning its closest competitor Waymo, particularly when Musk said that, according to the reports, after this successful initial launch phase that could be up to a thousand robotaxis along the way in a few months.
As a reminder, Waymo currently has a totally operational fleet of 1,500 vehicles on the road in four important cities in the USA., With the areas in which it operates constantly expanding within those cities. Anyone can call a driver without a simple application interface and will not see a human inside the vehicle.
At the end of 2026, he hopes to have added another 2,000 vehicles according to a blog post of the company owned by the alphabet launched in May this year, since he continues to prepare a Jaguar I-Pace car fleet to drive autonomous.
Waymo also announced that he will be the first important client of Ioniq 5 Robotaxi produced in mass of Hyundai, which will help him to climb even faster.
Thinking that Musk can reach this stage a couple of months after what is basically an initial test phase is pure fantasy, especially since he insists on using a full -fledged autonomous system that lacks radars, lidar and a myriad of other sensors that his rivals say it is mandatory for reliable and safe service.
Scalar is the real test
There have already been several videos in Reddit that seem to show Tesla Robotaxis behaving erratically, diverting at the occupied intersections and hitting the brakes for parked police cars that do not even stop along the way.
According to, it is impossible to verify the authenticity of a Reddit video, but there is a growing list of very public cases in which the Tesla’s full autonomous driving system has been active during an accident.
The first revisions of the experience seem to a large extent, and most riders describe the impulse as “soft” or “as a human”, but these are still very early.
![Tesla Robotaxi's first trip [Full Drive] - YouTube](https://pakgazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/1750706419_419_I-am-not-buying-the-exaggeration-of-Tesla-Robotaxi-Here.jpg)
Attend
Things will become much more complicated if Tesla legitimately has thousands of vehicles on the road, eliminates the operator sitting in the passenger seat, and builds its application so that the general public can really use it. I predict being at least two years away.
Next to Waymo, there are companies in China that are also running ahead with active totally autonomous travel transport services. Baidu, Weride and Pony.AI are already accumulating hundreds and thousands of miles.
According to reports, Baidu caused anxiety among taxi drivers, automotive brands and the public who works after launching a driver without driver in Wuhan who offered trips of about six miles (far beyond what Tesla can inform more or less that Tesla can travel) for about 50 cents.
According to CNN, it moves with a human driver in the steering wheel and, naturally, it was very popular, according to CNN, which takes to panic that many works could soon be at risk.
Once the legal framework is in its place for the generalized deployment of autonomous vehicles, it would not be too difficult to think that the Chinese could enter and master the market … as they have done with electric vehicles.
