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- Tesla has been testing its robotaxi service in Austin with a limited number of invitees.Business Insider joined one of them for a series of trips and documented the experience.The rides were mostly smooth, but BI encountered three human interventions during the rides.
This week, I flew to Austin to do what only a few have been able to: ride in Tesla's Robotaxis.
I took five trips that my rider companion and I found mostly smooth, but there were some bumps. We encountered three issues, including one in which the Robotaxi began to drive the wrong way onto an empty one-way street clearly marked with "Do Not Enter" signs.
Since the end of June, Tesla has been testing Robotaxi, the company's autonomous ride-hailing service. Musk has said that Robotaxi is part of Tesla's road map to becoming a full-fledged AI and robotics company.
The service is still in its early stages. A limited number of autonomous Model Ys navigate Austin roads, and a safety operator sits in on every ride. A small group of people has been given early access to the service, including Vu Kong, an Austin resident who manages a dental group and invests in Tesla on the side.
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Kong seems to be one of the few Robotaxi invitees who aren't Tesla or EV influencers with a large social media presence. He told me he got access about a week after the Robotaxi launch by signing up on the company website.
"I was pretty impressed about how consistent the rides were," Kong said after seven trips. "They were all pretty smooth, and I felt safe in all of them. By the third time, I just forgot I was in an autonomous car. I was doing meetings in the car, taking phone calls, and doing Zoom calls."
I took two half-hour rides and three shorter rides with Kong.
Pick-up times weren't always consistent, and the app had a few glitchy moments. In Downtown Austin, Tesla will be going up against pick-up times of less than 10 minutes and relatively low prices from Uber, which manages Alphabet's Waymo fleet.
A spokesperson for Tesla and a few employees on Tesla's Robotaxi team BI reached out to did not respond to a request for comment.
Here's what I saw.
A confident Tesla
First, the new 2025 Tesla Model Y feels great.
I always appreciate how spacious Teslas feel, thanks to the glass roof that allows light to enter the cabin.
The seats are comfortable enough, but I wondered why Tesla would go with bright white seats for cars that will presumably be taking on a lot of passengers. The seats are leather, so maybe they'll be easy to maintain.
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Throughout the rides, I saw an autonomous driving system that can be safe and confident in its maneuvers. Tesla's Robotaxi, unlike its competitors, relies only on external cameras and neural networks to navigate its environment.
Our car maintained a safe distance with a cyclist, recognized construction zones that are rampant in Austin, and could judge when to make turns while there was oncoming traffic.
Human interventions
Despite the mostly smooth experience, I encountered a few disengagements — moments when the safety operator inside the car or a remote support agent had to intervene.
Two of the Robotaxi disengagements occurred on the very first route, which we began at around 7 a.m. on Wednesday at Summer Moon Coffee, an Austin-based café chain.
At the start, when the Robotaxi was attempting to pull out of the parking lot, a message appeared on the console screen: "Our team has identified an issue and is working to resolve it."
A remote "support agent" connected with us: "It looks like the vehicle isn't making any progress. Is everything OK?"
In-car safety operators hired by Tesla largely avoid interacting with riders.
When the remote agent asked us the question, the operator quietly turned to us and nodded his head, nudging us to talk.
It was unclear what caused the Robotaxi to be stuck. There were no oncoming cars and the roads were quiet.
After the support agent said they would help, the steering wheel came back to life and made a jerky movement. The Robotaxi inched forward and slammed on the brakes.
It's unclear how much control Tesla's remote team had over the vehicle. The Robotaxi pulled out of the parking lot and began its route.
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The second disengagement came 20 minutes into the ride, when Kong changed the route to return to his office.
The safety operator inside the car touched the screen to pause the ride. While I was talking, I hadn't noticed the Robotaxi begin to head the wrong way down an empty, one-way road marked with two signs that said "Do Not Enter."
The safety operator did not talk to us. When Kong pressed "Resume Ride," the operator immediately stopped the car again.
That's when we realized we were supposed to wait for another remote support agent, who quickly helped us. The Robotaxi made a three-point turn to get back in the right direction.
The last disengagement came during my fourth Robotaxi ride on a late Thursday morning.
Kong and I wanted to go to the very tip of the phallic-shaped service area Tesla unveiled earlier this week.
The Robotaxi app allowed us to put in a destination that was just outside of the service area — a Summer Moon Coffee location in North Austin. The app indicated that the vehicle would drop us off close to the destination, requiring a 10-minute walk the rest of the way.
As we approached our destination, Kong changed the route to another location that was within the geofence.
The Robotaxi put us on a route that would take the vehicle just outside of the service area for a brief moment in order to head to our new destination.
The vehicle soon pulled over, and another remote support agent got in touch with us.
"I just wanted to let you know it was routing a little bit outside of our range, so we just changed the route so that it wouldn't go outside our fence," the agent said.
At no point did I feel the Tesla Robotaxi put us in danger. It was interesting to see the system's limits.
Other Robotaxi limits
Pick-up times for the most part were under 10 minutes.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Robotaxi app gave us a nearly 30-minute pick-up time for a 20-minute ride.
The app showed that a Robotaxi was picking us up from the northern part of the new service area. It was the same Robotaxi we had for the first ride that morning, based on the matching license plate.
Kong attempted to find another car with a shorter pick-up time to no avail.
It also appears that Tesla's Robotaxis are avoiding the highway.
During our fourth ride to North Austin in the upper part of the service area, Kong, who has lived in the city for five years, said the Robotaxi was taking a longer route to a destination that should be about an 18-minute trip.
"Normally we'd take the highway to get there," he said.
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Musk has long pitched an autonomous car that is generalizable — meaning the vehicle could handle any environment, including highways, with few operational limits and without the need to map a region before deployment. The AI driver is trained on large amounts of data, so, in theory, it should be able to drive the same way a human driver can go through unfamiliar areas.
It's unclear why the Tesla Robotaxi avoided the highway. Tesla's FSD (Supervised) handled San Francisco's highway flawlessly in BI's last test.
Kong added that the drop-off location could be improved so that the Robotaxi is closer to the actual destination.
In terms of the app experience, Kong told me that it can be a bit buggy.
We saw one moment when the app showed that a car was arriving in 29 minutes, even though we had just ended our ride and did not order another Robotaxi.
A work in progress
My colleagues and I at BI have closely reported on the robotaxi race, the efforts Tesla has made to push out an autonomous driver system, and the bold promises Musk has made around self-driving cars and artificial intelligence.
I've also compared Tesla's Full Self-Driving (Supervised), the EV company's advanced driver-assistance system, to Waymo with my colleague Alistair Barr. I walked away impressed that FSD could navigate San Francisco roads and highways using only cameras, but saw a critical error after the Tesla ran a red light.
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My expectations for the Tesla Robotaxi were high — I expected quiet, uneventful rides — but I also suspected that it would probably not be perfect.
The company has indicated that the Austin service is a "pilot launch." Safety operators are inside the vehicle, access is limited to invitees, and the company is charging a flat fee of $6.90 per ride.
Waymo began testing its own robotaxi service with an early-access program in California in 2021. That year, the company reported 300 disengagements to the California Department of Motor Vehicles. In 2024, when Waymo opened up to the San Francisco public, the company reported about 245 disengagements in the state. Waymo also says it's now providing over 250,000 paid rides a week.
Tesla could get there. It just needs to start by conquering Austin.
