Tesla has started offering Robotaxi rides without a safety monitor in Austin, Texas. This move comes after years of missed deadlines and promises from Elon Musk. The announcement was made by Musk on X, where he shared a video of someone riding in a Tesla Robotaxi without the usual safety monitor in the front passenger seat.
However, it has been revealed that the safety monitors are still present, but in a different vehicle. Tesla VP of Self-Driving Ashok Elluswamy provided some clarity on the rollout strategy, stating that starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors, and the ratio will increase over time. This context is important when considering everything we know about the Tesla Robotaxi program.
The service finally launched in June 2025, but it came with a "safety monitor" in the front seat, which was basically Tesla's public FSD with the supervising driver being moved to the passenger seat. " However, only for employee testing and internal rides. The paying public still gets safety monitors as of now, when the transition is starting as per Elluswamy's comment.
Throughout 2025, we've been tracking Tesla's Robotaxi crashes reported to NHTSA. Tesla's Robotaxi fleet has now been involved in at least 8 crashes since June, all while having a safety monitor in the vehicle who should have been preventing additional incidents. An unknown number of additional accidents, as this data is not being shared by Tesla.
This raises concerns about the safety of unsupervised self-driving vehicles. The average human driver crashes about once every 500,000 miles, but Tesla's "autonomous" Robotaxis are crashing more than 8 times as often as human drivers. And that's with a trained safety supervisor in the car ready to intervene.
What's worse, Tesla abuses NHTSA's capability to redact information in crash reports. The Robotaxi program in Austin is much smaller than Musk claims. A 19-year-old engineering student at Texas A&M, Ethan McKanna, reverse-engineered Tesla's Robotaxi app to track the availability of the network.
His tracker found only 32 different Tesla Model Ys, at the time, used in the Robotaxi network, a far cry from Musk's prediction of "500 vehicles" by year-end. Even more telling: McKanna's data shows Tesla is typically running fewer than 10 Robotaxis at the same time, if they're running any at all. Meanwhile, Waymo is clocking 450,000 weekly driverless rides across Austin, Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and now Miami.
S. cities by the end of 2026. Tesla is heavily relying on remote monitoring to make this work.
The announcement was made after years of broken promises and missed timelines. Musk finally getting a version of the "win" he has been desperately seeking. But considering the alarming crash data we have and the evidence of heavy remote monitoring, should we be excited or terrified?
The key metrics to watch are the gradual approach and the ratio increase over time. This incremental approach is essentially an admission that Tesla isn't ready to flip the switch entirely. Compare this to Musk's December claim that "unsupervised is pretty much solved" – if it were truly solved, why the need for a gradual ratio increase?
The point of mixing in "a few unsupervised vehicles" with your supervised fleet if you already have a crash rate higher than human drivers, with the safety monitor presumably preventing further crashes is concerning. Tesla is only operating a small fleet to limit the potential for crashes. The charitable interpretation is that Tesla is being appropriately cautious, gathering data on unsupervised performance in a controlled way before scaling up.
That would actually be the responsible approach. However, given Musk's track record, I lean towards the cynical interpretation, which is that this is about optics. Tesla can now claim to have "unsupervised robotaxis" while the vast majority of vehicles still have safety monitors.
It's a way to manufacture a win after a decade of missed deadlines. The truth is probably somewhere in between. Tesla has made progress.
The technology is better than it was. " Waymo is operating fully driverless commercial services in multiple cities with over 100 million miles of data showing they are safer than humans. Tesla is mixing a few unsupervised vehicles into a fleet of 30-some cars in Austin, most of which still have safety monitors.
That's not leading the industry. That's playing catch-up while trying to look like you're winning.
Tesla's decision to start Robotaxi rides without a safety monitor in Austin is a concerning move that raises questions about the company's readiness for unsupervised self-driving vehicles. While the technology has improved, it's still not ready for widespread deployment. The fact that Tesla is relying on remote monitoring to make this work only adds to the concerns.
