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It’s official — Elon Musk has announced that Tesla will launch its robotaxi in Austin at the end of June, which will revolutionize autonomous mobility [1]

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Date: 2025-05-24 10:30:31-04:00

You know it’s serious when Elon Musk picks a date (we mean a deadline, not Shaven Zilis’ successor). After years of teasing, demos, and delays that made even the most faithful Tesla fans side-eye their calendars, Tesla’s robotaxi service is finally launching for real. It will finally happen in Austin, Texas, starting by the end of June 2025.

While the rollout will be limited at first, this marks Tesla’s first real swing at a fully autonomous ride-hailing service. And if Musk gets his way, this will be the beginning of the end for human drivers altogether.

Robotaxis are (finally) hitting the road

The launch will kick off with a pilot fleet of around 10 Tesla vehicles, likely modified Model Ys, all equipped with the company’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) Unsupervised software. These robotaxis will roam designated “safe zones” in Austin, carefully selected for simplicity and low risk.

Don’t expect them to handle every four-way stop or construction zone just yet: Tesla’s geofencing strategy ensures these first cars stick to areas the software can manage confidently. Musk also confirmed the use of remote teleoperators, human monitors who can step in if the car gets confused or caught in a jam.

So you will probably have a remote taxi driver eating Cheetos and chilling while supervising your ride. Unfortunately, it’s not as cool as the Delamain Cabs in Cyber Punk 2077.

Scaling up fast—because of course it is

Musk being Musk, the plan isn’t just 10 cars forever. The company wants to scale up to 1,000 vehicles within a few months, with the long-term goal of deploying hundreds of thousands of robotaxis across the U.S. in the coming years. First, we will have to see if no prototypes end up in Lady Bird Lake first.

Before we all jump in and ditch steering wheels forever, there’s one big question looming: is this safe?

Tesla’s autonomous technology is still under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The agency is particularly focused on how FSD performs under poor weather conditions, low visibility, and situations where… let’s just say, nuance matters.

Tesla has been asked to hand over safety data and explain how its robotaxis will handle unpredictable real-world chaos; things like jaywalking pedestrians, emergency vehicles, and wild Texas left turns.

Let’s not forget: Tesla promised a million robotaxis on the road by 2020. We’re five years late and still in testing mode. So yeah, the government’s watching this launch very closely.

How is this different from what Waymo is already doing?

Waymo’s already operating robotaxis in cities like Phoenix, Los Angeles, and —surprise!— Austin. But their approach is wildly different:

Waymo uses LiDAR, radar, and a whole buffet of sensors

Tesla relies entirely on cameras and neural nets , betting that software + vision is the superior long-term solution

, betting that software + vision is the superior long-term solution Waymo is cautious and meticulous. Tesla… well, Tesla is Musk-style aggressive

That means Tesla’s approach might scale faster, but it’s also skating closer to the edge in terms of real-world complexity. And that edge is razor-sharp when you’re talking about cars with no drivers.

The long-promised affordable EV has been delayed. Instead, Tesla is pouring its resources into:

Robotaxis

The Optimus humanoid robot

And maybe (probably?) a merger with xAI, Musk’s AI company, which is currently building the Colossus supercomputer to power FSD and beyond

Musk recently said that “the only things that matter long-term are autonomy and Optimus,” making it clear that Tesla is betting everything on AI and robotics—not just cars.

For years, Elon Musk has dangled the dream of a car that drives itself, earns you money, and reshapes urban life. Now, he’s actually flipping the switch. Tesla’s robotaxi rollout in Austin isn’t a concept. It’s real, it’s starting, and it could change how we think about car ownership forever.

Or, it could crash, literally or metaphorically, and we’ll all be reading about it again in six months. Either way, the streets of Austin are about to get a whole lot more robotic.

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[1] Url: https://eladelantado.com/news/tesla-robotaxi-austin-launch-june-2025/

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