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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Tesla's robotaxi rollout runs into trouble
Tesla's robotaxi rollout runs into trouble originally appeared on TheStreet. Just when Tesla's () robotaxi dreams started gaining steam—bam, another curveball. Tesla bulls have been itching for robotaxis to hit the road, and Elon Musk's Austin trial announcement stirred the pot last month. 💵💰💰💵 Though the dream's still alive, the detours have been piling up of late, spelling more speed bumps ahead for investors. The timing couldn't be worse. The bulls felt they could breathe easy, with Musk finally all-in on Tesla. However, the off-putting developments of late spell more turbulence ahead for the robotaxi rollout. Since Tesla revealed the sci-fi-esque Cybercab last October, investors and Wall Street pundits have hailed it as the next revolution. To be fair, the robotaxi hype's been circling for promised a million cars on the road by 2020, but that deadline famously came and went like a ghost. Following the October reveal, Tesla fans felt shortchanged when Musk jumped on President Trump's bandwagon. The focus quickly shifted away from the self-driving cars to 'DOGE' government drama. However, after Q1 and soap-opera-like fallout with Trump, Musk's focus is back on Tesla. He told investors during Tesla's Q1 earnings call that 'Doge work is mostly done,' pledging just 'a day or two a week' on outside commitments. Needless to say, a lot is riding on the robotaxi catalyst, the moonshot analysts say, which could supercharge Tesla's future. More Tesla Stock News: Tesla robotaxi launch hits major speed bump Musk's AI chatbot weighs in on Tesla stock and Robotaxi SpaceX faces a surprising rival Tesla is already battling Wedbush's Dan Ives sees a trillion-dollar upside if Tesla nails self-driving. At the same time, relatively conservative Oppenheimer analysts say it could be a make-or-break for the stock. Tesla circled June 22 for its big robotaxi debut in Austin. Musk picked Texas for a reason: home turf with a lot looser autonomous vehicle (AV) rules than just days before go-time, Texas lawmakers have sent a disappointing message. A group out of Austin urged Tesla to hold off until September 1, when new AV rules kick in. The new rules include safety checks and clearer compliance rules. Seven Texas lawmakers have reportedly signed the hold-off on the rollout. The list includes big names like Rep. Vikki Goodwin (D-Austin), Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, Sen. Judith Zaffirini, Rep. Lulu Flores, and three others—seven in total. Despite the roadblocks, Tesla is still on course for the trials. Tesla's official stance remains that it has already met safety standards under the current law and will continue pushing on. The message is essentially for Tesla to pump the brakes, follow the new rules, and launch later when everything complies. The pressure is unwelcome from the company's perspective, especially when it has received an AV operator designation in Austin ahead of the planned trials. All this hits as Tesla's FSD tech is under scrutiny, throwing safety concerns back in the spotlight. To put things in perspective, a Cybertruck drifted into oncoming traffic on FSD in mid-June. Days later, a Model 3 got stuck on train tracks and got hit. Meanwhile, Tesla's competition in the niche continues to impress. Alphabet's Waymo and GM's Cruise have successfully operated driverless ride-hailing services in cities like Phoenix and San Francisco over the past few years. In contrast to Tesla, they've taken a more gradual approach, with geofenced areas, extensive safety driver testing, and slower expansion. Tesla is taking a more aggressive route by utilizing its existing owner fleet and vision-only tech, which many believe is riskier. Nevertheless, Tesla needs to act fast to pull its stock out of the rut it's been in over the past year. It's down north of 20% YTD, and 27% in the past six months alone. The stock is hovering near the low $320s, suggesting that some of the robotaxi excitement and Musk's refocusing efforts are baked into its price. Analysts' average targets sit around the low $300s, so the market isn't looking to price in the potential wild success. In short, Tesla's stock looks more like a bet on its ability to transition from simply selling EVs to monetizing autonomous technology at robotaxi rollout runs into trouble first appeared on TheStreet on Jun 19, 2025 This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jun 19, 2025, where it first appeared.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Tesla Robotaxis Will Reportedly Get a Quiet Launch: Just 10 Cars in Select Areas
PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing. Tesla's robotaxis are expected to roll out on June 22, but you may not be able to catch one immediately. The launch is going to be very limited in terms of both cars and operational area, the Financial Times reports. At launch, Tesla's ride-hailing service will use only 10 Model Y cars, which will be geo-fenced to avoid Austin's most challenging roads and areas. Additionally, the cars will be monitored by remote teleoperators who can take control of vehicles in case they run into trouble. No further details have been shared about the upcoming robotaxi service, possibly because Tesla has reportedly tried to block public access to it. The reported fleet, however, falls at the lower end of the 10–20 cars CEO Elon Musk mentioned previously. The project has been delayed for years now, and safety may have a major role to play. The automaker is currently being investigated for crashes linked to its Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology. Earlier this month, Musk said the company was 'being super paranoid about safety' and suggested the robotaxi launch could be pushed beyond June 22. When it comes to regulations, though, Tesla has the all-clear from the Department of Transportation (DOT). It was spotted testing the driverless Model Ys in Austin earlier this month. Before that, in April, the automaker had conducted internal tests for employees in Austin and San Francisco. Google-owned rival Waymo, on the other hand, has become operational in multiple cities and has a fleet of 1,500 autonomous vehicles (AVs). It entered Tesla's home turf Austin in March, following a month-long trial with users who voluntarily signed up. We are just a few days away from the launch date, but Tesla has yet to provide details about a trial program. According to a New York Times report from earlier this week, analysts expect Tesla's robotaxis to be initially limited to company employees and invited guests. They might not be available to the general public 'for several months.'
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Tesla is set to launch its robotaxi service in Austin this weekend, entering a crowded autonomous vehicle field
The launch of Tesla's robotaxi service is tentatively set for this weekend in Austin, Texas, entering a crowded arena of autonomous vehicles already operating in the city. Tesla is competing with driverless Waymo taxis that are already transporting people around the city, while Amazon's Zoox and Volkswagen are testing robotaxis there too. Tesla's driverless taxi service launch has been highly anticipated by investors and fans, however, officials and lawmakers have expressed automotive safety concerns. On Wednesday, Texas lawmakers sent a letter to Tesla urging the company to delay its robotaxi service launch until September, when a new state law regulating autonomous vehicles takes effect. It adds to another letter, sent by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to Tesla last month, asking for additional safety information about its robotaxi rollout. That same month, Elon Musk, Tesla's chief executive, acknowledged the need for national regulations around autonomous vehicles. 'It's going to be important to have a unified set of national regulations for self-driving cars,' he told CNBC. 'Otherwise, you're going to get into this weird situation where, if you're driving from Maine to New York, you're going to go through 10 different sets of regulations. Cars are going to behave differently. It's not going to make any sense.' Here's what we know about the driverless service set to launch this weekend. For the initial launch of the fully autonomous ride-hailing robotaxi service, Tesla will use its internal fleet of Model Y electric vehicles, updated with the company's Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, without a driver. If the autonomous cars run into a safety issue, a remote driver can step in and take control of the vehicle. The Cybercab is Tesla's driverless taxi that will also rely on the FSD software without a human driving the vehicle. The initial launch of Tesla's robotaxi service won't include the Cybercab because it isn't expected to go into production until at least 2026. Musk says each Cybercab will likely cost less than $30,000 to produce. The fully autonomous vehicle won't have a steering wheel or pedals and will have a large center touchscreen. The two-passenger vehicle won't have a backseat or a rear window but will have a rear cargo area. Musk says it won't have a traditional charging port and will rely on inductive (wireless) charging, which will charge by parking over a pad embedded in a designated charging area. Musk said earlier this year that the service would launch sometime in June. Bloomberg News then reported the launch was poised to happen on June 12, citing a person familiar with the matter. Two days before the anticipated launch, Musk reposted a video on X that showed Tesla testing a self-driving Model Y car in Austin, with what appeared to be no driver. Later that day, Musk replied to a user on X that the tentative rollout of the robotaxi service was June 22. 'We are being super paranoid about safety, so the date could shift,' Musk said. He also indicated that the first driverless trip from the Tesla factory to a customer's house will take place on June 28, which is the billionaire's birthday. The letter that Texas Democratic lawmakers sent Wednesday to Tesla's director of field quality urged the company to delay the robotaxi service launch until a new Texas law takes effect, on Sept. 1. The law revises previous state guidelines for autonomous vehicles and requires the operators to receive prior authorization from the Department of Motor Vehicles. The letter states that in order to get that authorization, Tesla needs to show: that the vehicles can operate while abiding by state traffic laws, have a recording device, comply with federal standards, are properly registered and insured, and can 'achieve a minimal risk condition' if the autonomous system stops working. The Texas lawmakers asked the company to provide 'detailed information demonstrating that Tesla will be compliant with the new law upon the launch of driverless operations in Austin' if they decide to proceed with the launch over the weekend. Yahoo News has reached out to Tesla for comment. In addition to the Model Y taxis being remotely monitored at first, Musk told CNBC that the vehicles will also be 'geofenced' to certain areas of Austin that Tesla considers the safest to navigate. 'We want to deliberately take it slow,' Musk said. 'I mean, we could start with 1,000 or 10,000 [robotaxis] on day one, but I don't think that would be prudent. So we will start with probably 10 for a week, then increase it to 20, 30, 40.' For the initial launch, the robotaxi service is expected to only be available to Tesla employees or by invite. 'The service will probably not be available to the general public for several months, analysts said,' according to the New York Times. Musk says he hopes to have by the end of 2026 'over a million Teslas' doing 'unsupervised full self-driving, where you do not need to pay attention.' Musk had originally promised in 2019 that there would be 1 million self-driving robotaxis on the road by 2020.
Euronews
7 hours ago
- Automotive
- Euronews
Tesla readies for possible robotaxi launch this weekend
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said public rides of his company's first robotaxi might be available as early as June 22 in the city of Austin, Texas. Musk said on his social media platformX that the date could shift because the company is 'being super paranoid about safety.' Some X users reported that they were invited to be some of the first to use the robotaxi on its launch this weekend. The Cybercab, the name for Tesla's robotaxi, had also been spotted near Austin, Texas, earlier this month. Euronews Next has reached out to Tesla to confirm whether the launch is still happening but did not receive a response at the time of publication. The launch could come despite a group of Democratic Texas lawmakers asking Tesla to delay the robotaxi debut 'in the best interest of both public safety and building public trust in Tesla's operations'. Is the Cybercab ready? Crijn Bouman, CEO of Rocsys, a company that develops service infrastructure for autonomous vehicles, told Euronews Next that Tesla's potential launch is important because it 'will emphasise that the robotaxi is real.' 'It will come with the realisation that… autonomous driving just works,' he said. 'It's difficult to say whether [Tesla is] ready or not, but everybody's excited and for sure everyone will be watching'. For Tesla's launch to be successful, Bouman said the company will have to have not only the robotaxi ready but also all of the infrastructure around it. That means scaling up to '1000' vehicles, a 'couple dozen' service hubs to clean and charge the cars and finding regular maintenance services for them, he added. The company, which used to 'control the narrative' on autonomous vehicles, is now facing competition from Waymo, the first company in North America to scale up a robotaxi business, Bouman said. 'If the whole operation isn't included, they won't be close to Waymo at all,' he said, noting that Waymo Rideshare sends a safe, clean robotaxi to a pickup location in five minutes. 'We likely won't see that on [Sunday]'. Might not be enough to 'turn the tide' of public opinion The Cybercab's potential launch comes at a difficult time for Tesla as stocks have plummeted over the last six months withfactories and Cybertrucks being vandalised. Tesla is also facing an investigation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the US after the company's Full Self-Driving (FSD) system was allegedly involved in multiple crashes, including one where a pedestrian was killed. Bouman doesn't believe that an eventual robotaxi launch will 'turn the tide' of public opinion towards Tesla unless the company starts to be more transparent. 'You have to show that the service is actually working at scale… normally the bar is that a robotaxi has to be ten times more safe than a human driver to gain the trust of the public,' he said. '[Tesla] has to show that [with] … a third party analysis on the data'.
Miami Herald
a day ago
- Automotive
- Miami Herald
Musk's AI chatbot weighs in on Tesla stock and Robotaxi
Well, at least he passed the drug test. Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk took to X, the social media site he owns, to post the results of a recent drug test, which show he tested negative for ketamine, ecstasy, cocaine, amphetamines and other drugs a few days earlier. Don't miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free daily newsletter The action was in response to a New York Times article published 12 days prior that alleged the SpaceX owner and President Donald Trump megadonor had been a near-daily user of ketamine while campaigning for Trump last year. Until recently Musk had headed up the controversial Department of Government Efficiency, before his very public breakup with Trump, which included accusations involving convicted child offender Jeffrey Epstein that the world's richest man later deleted. Picking up on another poster's suggestion, Musk declared "I hereby challenge the NYT and WSJ to take drug tests and publish the results!" "They won't, because those hypocrites are guilty as sin," he added. In a statement to People, a Times spokesperson said nothing Musk "said or presented since our article about his drug use during the presidential campaign was published contradicts what we uncovered." Then there were those who made some observations about Musk's drug tests, including Grok, the chatbot developed by Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI. Image source: Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images "The drug test Musk shared likely accurately reflects no drug use within the days prior to June 11, 2025, given the detection limits of urine tests," Grok said in response to a question. "However, it does not disprove allegations of drug use in 2024, as the test's timing and method limit its scope." Without independent verification of the document's authenticity or additional testing (e.g., hair follicle), the chatbot said, "the results are inconclusive regarding the broader claims." More Tesla: Tesla robotaxi launch hits major speed bumpTesla claims rival startup is built on stolen trade secrets10,000 people join Tesla class action lawsuit over key issue "The public nature of the post and Musk's casual caption suggest it was more a rebuttal to critics than a definitive proof of long-term sobriety," Grok concluded. Tesla is scheduled to debut its Robotaxi autonomous EV ride-hailing service on June 22, but there are some safety. Consumers are skeptical of the Full-Self-Driving technology that undergirds the Robotaxi proposition, according to the May 2025 edition of the Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report. The report said that 60% of respondents considered Tesla's FSD "unsafe," 77% are unwilling to use Full-Self-Driving technology, and 48% believe FSD should be illegal. "Tesla's Robotaxi program is facing significant challenges as it approaches its tentative launch date," Grok said. The chatbot said that a live demonstration in Austin by the Dawn Project highlighted serious flaws in Tesla's FSD software, showing a Tesla Model Y failing to stop for a child mannequin behind a school bus. "Critics argue that Tesla's camera-based FSD system struggles in adverse conditions like fog or sun glare, and recent incidents, such as a Cybertruck driving in the wrong lane and a Model 3 getting stuck on railroad tracks, have intensified scrutiny," Grok said. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating Tesla's FSD software following four crashes, including a fatal pedestrian incident, the chatbot said. "Tesla's stock has been volatile, dropping 4% on June 17, 2025, after news of a production halt at its Austin Gigafactory and amid Musk's public feud with President Donald Trump," Grok said. "Some analysts worry that Trump could push for stricter federal oversight of Tesla's Robotaxi program, especially given Musk's political activities." Related: Tesla robotaxi launch hits major speed bump However, the chatbot said Tesla's ability to produce one million FSD-capable Model Ys - its midsize SUV - annually could enable rapid scaling compared with competitors like Alphabet's (GOOGL) Waymo, which plans to manufacture only 2,000 vehicles over the next year. "Musk has stated that the Robotaxis will operate in geofenced safe zones with remote supervision, potentially mitigating some risks," Grok said. "Tesla's vertical integration, controlling hardware, software, and charging infrastructure, is also seen as a competitive edge." The electric vehicle maker's shares are up 75% from 2024 and down 20% this year. "Tesla's golden age - marked by explosive growth, market dominance, and unchallenged EV leadership - appears to be waning, but the company still has paths to remain a major player," Grok said. Tesla faces competition from Chinese EV maker (BYDDY) , General Motors (GM) and Ford (F) , the AI assistant said. And "Musk's political involvement, including his Trump administration role, has sparked consumer backlash, with boycotts in key markets like Norway and Germany." Tesla's era of unchallenged supremacy is likely over, due to intensified competition, declining sales, and self-inflicted brand damage, the chatbot said. "However, its financial strength, energy business, and potential in AI/autonomy mean it could forge a new chapter of success if it navigates current headwinds effectively," Grok said. "The golden age may be past, but Tesla's story isn't finished." Related: Fund-management veteran skips emotion in investment strategy The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
