Latest news with #ModelYs
Business Insider
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Business Insider
Tesla fans want in on the latest exclusive club: Robotaxi access
There's a new hot ticket in Tesla fandom, and there's no surefire way of getting it: access to the company's autonomous ride-hailing service, Robotaxi. At the end of June, Tesla deployed a pilot launch of the much-anticipated robotaxi platform in Austin. The service started small, with about 10 to 20 Model Ys. A safety monitor sits in the front passenger seat, and a geofence initially covered about 30 square miles of the city. Though people in Austin can already try a robotaxi with Alphabet's Waymo on the Uber app, that hasn't stopped some of the lucky few who snagged access to Robotaxi from traveling more than a thousand miles just to experience Tesla's service. "I did about seven rides," John Stringer, a San Francisco Bay Area resident and founder of Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley, told Business Insider. "I was [in Austin] for like 48 hours." Stringer told BI that he experienced Robotaxi on the first day of its launch about a month ago. He said he did a ride-along with other Tesla influencers who received Day One access. About a week later, Stringer said he also received an invite. "I was just speechless," he said of his experience. "Not that I teared up or anything. I've been following Tesla hardcore for seven years, and it's just a big moment." On X, Tesla influencers and fans with large followings proudly announced their invitations on the social media platform, almost like a rite of passage. Posts are often accompanied by a screenshot of the email, proving its authenticity. "You're Invited to Early Access to Tesla Robotaxi!" the subject line reads. Though some Tesla fans who received an invite have made it a point to avoid speaking to reporters, Business Insider was able to try Robotaxi through a local Austin resident who invests in Tesla and received early access. BI previously reported that the rides were mostly smooth but encountered three disengagements, or moments when a remote Tesla rider support agent had to address an issue. A 'big moment' for owners and investors On Friday evening, hundreds of Tesla owners and fans gathered at the San Mateo County Event Center, 20 miles south of San Francisco, for a two-day festival dedicated to "Tesla, EVs, and SpaceX enthusiasts." Stringer's club organized the event. With rows of Tesla sedans and Cybertrucks parked in unison, the empty lot of the center began to look like a Tesla dealership. Starman, the astronaut dummy SpaceX launched into space in 2018, floated above the cars. "If you've been a Tesla owner and investor, this is a big moment," Stringer said of Robotaxi's arrival. "This is the moment where it's no longer Amazon bookstore. This is like the Tesla car company going fully autonomous." For Stringer and other Tesla fans who spoke with BI, the arrival of Robotaxi almost represents a vindication of their choice to believe in a company that has faced near bankruptcy and is, in their view, a constant target of negative media headlines. "I think the mainstream media is so skewed toward any news about Tesla," Rhajib Bhakat, a San Francisco-based engineer and Tesla investor, said. "For somebody who is not experiencing [Tesla] on a day-to-day basis, they have no way of knowing: Is he right? Or are these Tesla fanboys? How do you evaluate it?" "If I'm an investor, I would want to understand where this industry is headed. Am I putting my money in the right place?" Bhakat continued, "So the only way to experience it, for me, is to try it out."
Business Insider
4 days ago
- Automotive
- Business Insider
Tesla tells staff it plans to roll out its Robotaxi service in San Francisco this weekend
Tesla told staff on Thursday it plans to launch its Robotaxi service in San Francisco this weekend, according to an internal memo viewed by Business Insider. The company said its timeline for the launch had been moved up and the service could launch as soon as Friday. Some Tesla owners will be sent an invite to use the service, the memo said, and users will pay for Robotaxi rides. The geofenced area where Robotaxi service will operate covers a large swath of the Bay Area, including Marin, much of the East Bay, San Francisco, and stretching south to San Jose, according to the memo. The program will launch with safety drivers in the driver's seat who will be able to control the car using the steering wheel and brakes, it said. A spokesperson for the California DMV said the agency recently met with Tesla, but the company has yet to apply for a permit for driverless testing or deployment. The agency did not respond to questions regarding whether Tesla would be required to have a permit to launch its service with a safety monitor in the driver's seat. The California Public Utilities Commission granted Tesla a permit to provide a transportation service for employees, but as of July 10, Tesla had not applied for any permits that would allow it to provide a commercial service to the public, BI previously reported. The CPUC did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside its normal working hours on Friday. Elon Musk said during Tesla's quarterly earnings call on Wednesday that its Robotaxis will operate with a safety operator in the front seat during the initial deployment in the Bay area. In Austin, where Tesla launched its Robotaxi service last month, the carmaker currently has safety monitors that sit in the passenger seat of the vehicle and remote operators that can intervene if the vehicle goes off course. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment sent outside normal working hours. Tesla started its Robotaxi launch in Austin with just over 10 vehicles in a geofenced area that the company has since expanded. The service is currently invite-only. In preparation for the Robotaxi launch, Tesla built modified Model Ys at its factory in Austin, BI previously reported. The vehicles were fitted with slightly different parts than a traditional Model Y, including additional camera equipment and a second telecommunications unit. Earlier this month, Musk said on X that the company would launch the service in the Bay Area within one to two months. Musk said during Wednesday's earnings call that Tesla was in the process of getting regulatory approval in California. Musk has said the company plans to expand its service globally, but for now, it is also seeking approval in Florida and Arizona. Business Insider previously reported that Tesla had scaled up its autonomous testing capabilities in California, more than tripling the number of workers testing in the state. In December, the electric-car maker registered 224 in-house test drivers and 104 vehicles in the state for an autonomous testing permit, according to public records viewed by Business Insider. Earlier this month, Tesla shared a video showing its first fully autonomous delivery: a Tesla Model Y driving itself from the Austin factory to a customer's house. Tesla's AI Director, Ashok Elluswamy, said on X that the car reached speeds of 72 miles per hour at one point.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Tesla's earnings call left more questions than answers on robotaxi
Tesla CEO Elon Musk made more bold projections for robotaxi's expansion plans in the US. Investors, however, didn't get much insight into how the pilot launch was going in Austin. Tesla executives left out how many cars they will be deploying in the city and key safety data. Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, makes bold projections for his ventures. Robotaxi is no exception. Wednesday's earnings call, however, didn't give specifics on one big question: How is robotaxi's pilot launch going in Austin? The self-driving car program launched in June. "They've got to show progress, and that's what we didn't get," Gene Munster, a managing partner of Deepwater Asset Management who writes about Tesla and Alphabet, told Business Insider. Here's what Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla's VP of AI software, said after an analyst asked for key performance indicators around robotaxi, including the number of vehicles Tesla is operating, miles driven autonomously, and the number of safety-critical interventions: "We have more than 7,000 miles operating in Austin area. Just because service is new, we have a handful of vehicles right now, but then we are trying to expand the service in terms of both the area and also the number of vehicles, both in Austin and other locations. So far, there's like no notable safety critical incidents. Sometimes we have our own restrictions as to, for example, we restrict our speeding limit to 40 miles per hour … and if the vehicle wants go on like higher speed roads, we can stop the vehicle, but those are out of convenience as opposed to safety critical nature. So far this service has been really well received, and we continue to expand on it." In short, a couple of vehicles drove about 7,000 miles in Austin without alarming safety issues. The lack of critical safety incidents is great news for investors, but otherwise, there were not many other details. Musk said on Wednesday's call he expects autonomous Teslas to be available to "probably half of the population of the US by the end of the year," pending government approval. That's a lot of places that Tesla would need to cover and a lot of regulatory hoops to jump through in roughly five months. Tesla recently expanded robotaxi's service area in Austin, just a few weeks after it debuted to a limited number of invitees. On X, the company and Musk proudly showed a phallic-shaped geofence expansion that essentially said to competitors, "Mine is bigger than yours." In that move, Tesla made no mention of how many robotaxis it would add to the roads or whether it would invite more people to meet the potential increased demands of a larger service area. So far, we only know the figures Musk gave during April's earnings call, when the CEO said Tesla would start with 10 to 20 Model Ys. The service is still limited to invite-only. Tesla and a few folks on the company's Autopilot team didn't respond to questions posed on X about the vehicle numbers. A spokesperson for Tesla did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. What analysts want from Tesla Analysts told BI they would like to see a few robotaxi data points. Right now, a safety monitor sits on the front passenger side of every robotaxi. Data around human intervention or miles driven per disengagement is crucial because it can give investors some insight into when Tesla may feel confident enough to remove the human safety monitor, Munster said. In one of my rides in Austin, a safety monitor had to stop the ride as the vehicle started to head toward the wrong direction on a one-way road. "I think big picture is this: They're not comfortable at removing the observer right now because they know the smallest mess up on safety is going to be just a huge blow to them. And I don't blame them for going slow at it," Munster said. "I just wish that three months ago, when they launched, they would've said, 'Just so you know, we're really prioritizing safety here. It's going to be slow in Austin.'" Jose Asumendi, JPMorgan's head of European automotive research, told BI that if Tesla can get to a stage in Austin where robotaxis can drive people from one point to another and operate in different weather, it would mark "a stage of advanced development rather than an initial phase." Moving forward, Asumendi said that he'll be paying attention to three data points to track robotaxi's progression: number of cities the service has been deployed, number of accidents and disengagements per kilometer, and the technology's acceptance by the public. Tesla's stock fell about 4.4% after trading hours on Wednesday after the company reported revenues that were down 12% year over year and missed Wall Street expectations. The stock was down 8% on Thursday and is down 24% year to date. Read the original article on Business Insider
Business Insider
4 days ago
- Automotive
- Business Insider
Tesla's earnings call left more questions than answers on robotaxi
Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, makes bold projections for his ventures. Robotaxi is no exception. Wednesday's earnings call, however, didn't give specifics on one big question: How is robotaxi's pilot launch going in Austin? The self-driving car program launched in June. "They've got to show progress, and that's what we didn't get," Gene Munster, a managing partner of Deepwater Asset Management who writes about Tesla and Alphabet, told Business Insider. Here's what Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla's VP of AI software, said after an analyst asked for key performance indicators around robotaxi, including the number of vehicles Tesla is operating, miles driven autonomously, and the number of safety-critical interventions: "We have more than 7,000 miles operating in Austin area. Just because service is new, we have a handful of vehicles right now, but then we are trying to expand the service in terms of both the area and also the number of vehicles, both in Austin and other locations. So far, there's like no notable safety critical incidents. Sometimes we have our own restrictions as to, for example, we restrict our speeding limit to 40 miles per hour … and if the vehicle wants go on like higher speed roads, we can stop the vehicle, but those are out of convenience as opposed to safety critical nature. So far this service has been really well received, and we continue to expand on it." In short, a couple of vehicles drove about 7,000 miles in Austin without alarming safety issues. The lack of critical safety incidents is great news for investors, but otherwise, there were not many other details. Musk said on Wednesday's call he expects autonomous Teslas to be available to "probably half of the population of the US by the end of the year," pending government approval. That's a lot of places that Tesla would need to cover and a lot of regulatory hoops to jump through in roughly five months. Tesla recently expanded robotaxi's service area in Austin, just a few weeks after it debuted to a limited number of invitees. On X, the company and Musk proudly showed a phallic-shaped geofence expansion that essentially said to competitors, "Mine is bigger than yours." In that move, Tesla made no mention of how many robotaxis it would add to the roads or whether it would invite more people to meet the potential increased demands of a larger service area. So far, we only know the figures Musk gave during April's earnings call, when the CEO said Tesla would start with 10 to 20 Model Ys. The service is still limited to invite-only. Tesla and a few folks on the company's Autopilot team didn't respond to questions posed on X about the vehicle numbers. A spokesperson for Tesla did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. What analysts want from Tesla Analysts told BI they would like to see a few robotaxi data points. Right now, a safety monitor sits on the front passenger side of every robotaxi. Data around human intervention or miles driven per disengagement is crucial because it can give investors some insight into when Tesla may feel confident enough to remove the human safety monitor, Munster said. In one of my rides in Austin, a safety monitor had to stop the ride as the vehicle started to head toward the wrong direction on a one-way road. "I think big picture is this: They're not comfortable at removing the observer right now because they know the smallest mess up on safety is going to be just a huge blow to them. And I don't blame them for going slow at it," Munster said. "I just wish that three months ago, when they launched, they would've said, 'Just so you know, we're really prioritizing safety here. It's going to be slow in Austin.'" Jose Asumendi, JPMorgan's head of European automotive research, told BI that if Tesla can get to a stage in Austin where robotaxis can drive people from one point to another and operate in different weather, it would mark "a stage of advanced development rather than an initial phase." Moving forward, Asumendi said that he'll be paying attention to three data points to track robotaxi's progression: number of cities the service has been deployed, number of accidents and disengagements per kilometer, and the technology's acceptance by the public. Tesla's stock fell about 4.4% after trading hours on Wednesday after the company reported revenues that were down 12% year over year and missed Wall Street expectations. The stock was down 8% on Thursday and is down 24% year to date.
Business Insider
19-07-2025
- Automotive
- Business Insider
I tried Tesla's new Robotaxi. Here's what it got right (and wrong).
This week, I flew to Austin to do what only a few have been able to: ride in Tesla's Robotaxis. I took five trips that my rider companion and I found mostly smooth, but there were some bumps. We encountered three issues, including one in which the Robotaxi began to drive the wrong way onto an empty one-way street clearly marked with "Do Not Enter" signs. Since the end of June, Tesla has been testing Robotaxi, the company's autonomous ride-hailing service. Musk has said that Robotaxi is part of Tesla's road map to becoming a full-fledged AI and robotics company. The service is still in its early stages. A limited number of autonomous Model Ys navigate Austin roads, and a safety operator sits in on every ride. A small group of people has been given early access to the service, including Vu Kong, an Austin resident who manages a dental group and invests in Tesla on the side. Kong seems to be one of the few Robotaxi invitees who aren't Tesla or EV influencers with a large social media presence. He told me he got access about a week after the Robotaxi launch by signing up on the company website. "I was pretty impressed about how consistent the rides were," Kong said after seven trips. "They were all pretty smooth, and I felt safe in all of them. By the third time, I just forgot I was in an autonomous car. I was doing meetings in the car, taking phone calls, and doing Zoom calls." I took two half-hour rides and three shorter rides with Kong. Pick-up times weren't always consistent, and the app had a few glitchy moments. In Downtown Austin, Tesla will be going up against pick-up times of less than 10 minutes and relatively low prices from Uber, which manages Alphabet's Waymo fleet. A spokesperson for Tesla and a few employees on Tesla's Robotaxi team BI reached out to did not respond to a request for comment. Here's what I saw. A confident Tesla First, the new 2025 Tesla Model Y feels great. I always appreciate how spacious Teslas feel, thanks to the glass roof that allows light to enter the cabin. The seats are comfortable enough, but I wondered why Tesla would go with bright white seats for cars that will presumably be taking on a lot of passengers. The seats are leather, so maybe they'll be easy to maintain. Throughout the rides, I saw an autonomous driving system that can be safe and confident in its maneuvers. Tesla's Robotaxi, unlike its competitors, relies only on external cameras and neural networks to navigate its environment. Our car maintained a safe distance with a cyclist, recognized construction zones that are rampant in Austin, and could judge when to make turns while there was oncoming traffic. Human interventions Despite the mostly smooth experience, I encountered a few disengagements — moments when the safety operator inside the car or a remote support agent had to intervene. Two of the Robotaxi disengagements occurred on the very first route, which we began at around 7 a.m. on Wednesday at Summer Moon Coffee, an Austin-based café chain. At the start, when the Robotaxi was attempting to pull out of the parking lot, a message appeared on the console screen: "Our team has identified an issue and is working to resolve it." A remote "support agent" connected with us: "It looks like the vehicle isn't making any progress. Is everything OK?" In-car safety operators hired by Tesla largely avoid interacting with riders. When the remote agent asked us the question, the operator quietly turned to us and nodded his head, nudging us to talk. It was unclear what caused the Robotaxi to be stuck. There were no oncoming cars and the roads were quiet. After the support agent said they would help, the steering wheel came back to life and made a jerky movement. The Robotaxi inched forward and slammed on the brakes. It's unclear how much control Tesla's remote team had over the vehicle. The Robotaxi pulled out of the parking lot and began its route. The second disengagement came 20 minutes into the ride, when Kong changed the route to return to his office. The safety operator inside the car touched the screen to pause the ride. While I was talking, I hadn't noticed the Robotaxi begin to head the wrong way down an empty, one-way road marked with two signs that said "Do Not Enter." The safety operator did not talk to us. When Kong pressed "Resume Ride," the operator immediately stopped the car again. That's when we realized we were supposed to wait for another remote support agent, who quickly helped us. The Robotaxi made a three-point turn to get back in the right direction. The last disengagement came during my fourth Robotaxi ride on a late Thursday morning. Kong and I wanted to go to the very tip of the phallic-shaped service area Tesla unveiled earlier this week. The Robotaxi app allowed us to put in a destination that was just outside of the service area — a Summer Moon Coffee location in North Austin. The app indicated that the vehicle would drop us off close to the destination, requiring a 10-minute walk the rest of the way. As we approached our destination, Kong changed the route to another location that was within the geofence. The Robotaxi put us on a route that would take the vehicle just outside of the service area for a brief moment in order to head to our new destination. The vehicle soon pulled over, and another remote support agent got in touch with us. "I just wanted to let you know it was routing a little bit outside of our range, so we just changed the route so that it wouldn't go outside our fence," the agent said. At no point did I feel the Tesla Robotaxi put us in danger. It was interesting to see the system's limits. Other Robotaxi limits Pick-up times for the most part were under 10 minutes. On Wednesday afternoon, the Robotaxi app gave us a nearly 30-minute pick-up time for a 20-minute ride. The app showed that a Robotaxi was picking us up from the northern part of the new service area. It was the same Robotaxi we had for the first ride that morning, based on the matching license plate. Kong attempted to find another car with a shorter pick-up time to no avail. It also appears that Tesla's Robotaxis are avoiding the highway. During our fourth ride to North Austin in the upper part of the service area, Kong, who has lived in the city for five years, said the Robotaxi was taking a longer route to a destination that should be about an 18-minute trip. "Normally we'd take the highway to get there," he said. Musk has long pitched an autonomous car that is generalizable — meaning the vehicle could handle any environment, including highways, with few operational limits and without the need to map a region before deployment. The AI driver is trained on large amounts of data, so, in theory, it should be able to drive the same way a human driver can go through unfamiliar areas. It's unclear why the Tesla Robotaxi avoided the highway. Tesla's FSD (Supervised) handled San Francisco's highway flawlessly in BI's last test. Kong added that the drop-off location could be improved so that the Robotaxi is closer to the actual destination. In terms of the app experience, Kong told me that it can be a bit buggy. We saw one moment when the app showed that a car was arriving in 29 minutes, even though we had just ended our ride and did not order another Robotaxi. A work in progress My colleagues and I at BI have closely reported on the robotaxi race, the efforts Tesla has made to push out an autonomous driver system, and the bold promises Musk has made around self-driving cars and artificial intelligence. I've also compared Tesla's Full Self-Driving (Supervised), the EV company's advanced driver-assistance system, to Waymo with my colleague Alistair Barr. I walked away impressed that FSD could navigate San Francisco roads and highways using only cameras, but saw a critical error after the Tesla ran a red light. My expectations for the Tesla Robotaxi were high — I expected quiet, uneventful rides — but I also suspected that it would probably not be perfect. The company has indicated that the Austin service is a "pilot launch." Safety operators are inside the vehicle, access is limited to invitees, and the company is charging a flat fee of $6.90 per ride. Waymo began testing its own robotaxi service with an early-access program in California in 2021. That year, the company reported 300 disengagements to the California Department of Motor Vehicles. In 2024, when Waymo opened up to the San Francisco public, the company reported about 245 disengagements in the state. Waymo also says it's now providing over 250,000 paid rides a week. Tesla could get there. It just needs to start by conquering Austin.
