Tesla has been testing a robotaxi service in the Bay Area for the past few months, Elon Musk said during the company's earnings call on Wednesday.
Company employees were able to summon an autonomously operated Tesla vehicle for rides using the company's prototype ride-hailing app, Musk said. The vehicles arrive with safety drivers behind the wheel, ready to intervene if anything goes wrong.
But Musk said the vehicles would drive autonomously using the latest version of the company's full self-driving software, which he said will be “1,000 times better” than human driving by the second quarter of 2025 Texas starting next year, pending regulatory approval.
Tesla does not currently have a license to operate a commercial autonomous rideshare service in California. Musk predicted that it would be easier to get approval in Texas than in California.
Of course, the current version of FSD is a level 2 driver assistance system, which is not autonomous and requires constant human supervision. Musk has promised that FSD will be “unsupervised” next year, but his previous predictions about autonomy have generally not come true.
Still, the fact that Tesla tested its ride-hailing feature with employees proves that the company is still committed to eventually launching the long-promised Tesla Network. First announced in Musk's Master Plan Part Deux, the Tesla Network claims to allow regular Tesla owners to autonomously send their vehicles out to act as robotaxis while their owners stay at home.
“This is truly a profound change,” Musk said. “Tesla will be more than just a vehicle and battery manufacturing company at this point.”
During the earnings call, Tesla executives described that certain features in the current Tesla app, such as sharing profiles and syncing settings across different vehicles, lay the groundwork for an eventual robotaxi service.
The company first released several screenshots of a ride-hailing feature in its app earlier this year. The first screen shows a large button that says “Summon” with a bottom message for the possible wait time. The next screen shows a 3D map with a small virtual vehicle following a route to the waiting passenger. It is very similar to the Uber app – but more reminiscent of Tesla.