Tesla Motors (TSLA.US) has announced the launch of a truly driverless robotaxi service in Austin, marking a critical milestone for the automaker just seven months after initiating a service that required a front-seat safety driver. Concurrently, Waymo's autonomous ride-hailing service has landed in Miami, with airport testing also commencing. CEO Elon Musk highlighted this progress on Thursday by reposting a real-world test video from a former Tesla AI engineer on social media platform X. Last month, Musk had already previewed that the company would begin testing vehicles with no occupants at all. In a separate post, Tesla's head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, revealed that a "small number" of vehicles in the company's robotaxi fleet are currently operating without a safety driver, adding that the proportion of vehicles without human supervision will gradually increase. As Tesla grapples with declining car sales, Musk is placing increasing emphasis on the company's artificial intelligence initiatives and robotaxi ambitions. While the launch of passenger services without a human safety backup could boost market confidence in its autonomous driving system, data submitted by Tesla to regulators shows that its small-scale fleet in the Texas capital was involved in eight traffic accidents over a six-month period last year. Following the news, Tesla's stock price rose, closing up 4% for the day. Meanwhile, shares of Uber and Lyft both fell more than 3% during the session before paring some losses. Musk has repeatedly predicted since 2025 that Tesla would achieve unsupervised passenger service by the end of that year, though some of his forecasts have significantly diverged from reality; in July of this year, he estimated that half of the U.S. population would be able to experience Tesla's Full Self-Driving service by year-end. Austin is currently the only city where Tesla offers its robotaxi service. Although the company launched a taxi service in the San Francisco Bay Area last year, it has not applied for a permit to test autonomous vehicles without a safety driver in California. Tesla lags far behind Alphabet's Waymo in this field—Waymo first launched a fully driverless service in the Phoenix area as early as late 2018 and has since deployed thousands of fee-charging autonomous vehicles in Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, and now Miami.
Concurrently, Alphabet's autonomous driving unit Waymo announced that its robotaxi service will officially open to the public in Miami on Thursday. This marks the first deployment in its plan to expand to roughly a dozen cities this year. In an official blog post on Thursday, Waymo stated it will gradually invite paying passengers from a waitlist of nearly 10,000 people in the Miami area to experience the service. The initial operational area will cover approximately 60 square miles, encompassing key neighborhoods such as the Design District, Wynwood, Brickell, and Coral Gables. A company spokesperson revealed that Waymo plans to eventually extend the service to Miami International Airport, with related testing already underway. Last December, the company began offering fully autonomous shuttle services to employees at the airport. The spokesperson did not disclose the exact number of vehicles testing in Miami, stating only that fewer than 100 would be deployed initially. As of last November, Waymo had deployed approximately 2,500 autonomous vehicles across five cities, with over half concentrated in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. Waymo is planning to launch services in more than ten cities this year under diverse business models, including other parts of the United States and London. The company employs a partnership model, outsourcing labor-intensive tasks such as vehicle cleaning, charging, and maintenance. In Miami, Uber-backed Moove will provide these operational services.
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