Tesla has confirmed it has been quietly operating a Full Self-Driving (FSD) ride-hailing network for its employees in the Bay Area. The program, which includes a safety driver in each vehicle, has been running as a pilot for almost a year.
This new venture is part of Tesla’s broader strategy to deploy a fully autonomous ride-hailing service in California and Texas next year.
According to comments made by Elon Musk during the Q3 2024 earnings call, the ride-hailing service currently operates exclusively for Tesla employees around the company’s headquarters and surrounding areas in the Bay Area. Each vehicle in the fleet is equipped with Tesla’s latest Full Self-Driving (FSD) software. However, out of an abundance of caution, a safety driver is still present in every vehicle, ready to take over if necessary.
The ride-hailing network has its own app, which employees can use to hail rides. Tesla shared a glimpse of this app in their Q1 2024 earnings report, but no one expected the company to already be testing it.
Although Tesla’s FSD has made significant advancements, especially with the launch of V12 and the end-to-end neural nets, achieving full autonomy, where no human intervention is ever needed, remains a work in progress. Musk did however reveal during the call that they expect FSD without a driver behind the wheel to be safer than a human driver by Q2 2025.
Musk also reiterated the company’s plans to launch unsupervised FSD, and subsequently Tesla’s ride-hailing network, in California and Texas in 2025. This timeline is still dependent on receiving regulatory approval from those states to launch the software and service.
