Elon Musk has confirmed that Tesla will begin deploying its robotaxi service on the streets of Austin, Texas, in June 2025. The new service will initially include around 10 vehicles, with plans to rapidly scale to as many as 1,000 robotaxis in the following months if the rollout goes smoothly.
Unlike Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology that is currently available in consumer vehicles and referred to as FSD (Supervised), the upcoming launch will use FSD Unsupervised. This version will allow Tesla to operate the cars without a human driver behind the wheel.
While Musk said there will be no safety drivers, he also confirmed the Austin robotaxi service will be monitored remotely by employees, but he did not clarify whether those employees will be able to remote operate the car, as has been suggested.
Musk also explained the system will be geofenced, or restricted, to certain parts of Austin to ensure safety and reliability. Musk clarified that the vehicles will also avoid complex or high-risk driving situations, such as difficult intersections, unless Tesla has a high degree of confidence in the system’s ability to handle them autonomously.
“We are going to deploy only to the parts that are the safest,” Musk said. “It’s not going to take intersections unless we are highly confident it will do well.”
Musk emphasized that the goal is to validate performance at a small scale before expanding. “It’s prudent for us to start with a small number, confirm that things are going well and then scale it up,” he said.
Musk is confident in Tesla’s planned rollout, noting that internal testing has shown “essentially no interventions” during 24/7 monitored drives. If all goes well, Musk said Tesla aims to have hundreds of thousands—or potentially over a million—FSD Unsupervised vehicles on U.S. roads by 2026.
Here is the full interview.
Here is the full conversation today between Elon Musk and CNBC's David Faber.
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) May 20, 2025
h/t @xdNiBoR pic.twitter.com/5nXkmwwfBQ
