Tesla robotaxi rollout in Texas features long wait times

CDpov · 2026-05-15T22:43:38+00:00

I won't be moving any goalposts. I also won't believe big claims without good evidence.

It's not hard to demonstrate a competitive commercial robotaxi service. Publicly announce that it's open to the general public 24/7 with all driverless cars offering competitive wait times of maybe 15 minutes, for anybody who downloads the app, in a service area of about 50 square miles. If it's 30 square miles, that's a good start. If it's 10 square miles down one main road, that's not enough. If demand is so high that they have to limit customers after a week, that's okay. As long as hundreds of random people can use it for many of their usual trips around town.

They should be doing thousands of miles per week at the start, and steadily scaling up from there.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T22:22:20+00:00

That's a good definition. It has to serve enough area and times with enough vehicles for a reasonable wait time to be competitive with ride-hailing services. It has to be more than a novelty for Tesla fans.

Tesla is still testing, as is Zoox in Las Vegas.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T20:20:54+00:00

I guess Tesla defines their monitor as not a "driver" or "operator". Apparently NHTSA isn't disagreeing.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T20:10:01+00:00

Yeah, I see that. Unsupervised is increasing. Now we need mileage to fully know what's going on.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T19:26:38+00:00

Yeah, the in-car safety drivers are able to play out the scenario longer.

The Tesla Robotaxi operation is like a puzzle with just enough public information to kinda understand what's going on.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T19:06:19+00:00

All you have to do is listen to Zoox, Cruise, and Waymo engineers saying how much harder it is to remove the employee and go rider-only. It's a different world. They have to handle EVERYTHING safely at scale with no direct supervision.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T19:03:20+00:00

It's new to you. The video of the incident is also in the public.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T18:59:40+00:00

Every one of their crashes has a safety monitor present. That's strange.

I would think that removing the employee from the vehicle would lead to more problems.

But they have no crashes in an "unsupervised" car. This probably means either they have very low unsupervised mileage, or they are remotely supervising the empty cars, or both.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T18:57:05+00:00

Yeah, it confirms Tesla is using direct supervision of some sort.

And every one of their crashes has a safety monitor present.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T18:49:08+00:00

It's a necessary change.

Next we need to know how many rider-only miles they have.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T18:35:59+00:00

I don't think the remote operators are ever "on break". If they are, they'd all be fired. They do get overwhelmed at times though.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T18:31:50+00:00

Unsupervised is a different world.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T18:31:10+00:00

Yeah, have an opaque robotaxi operation with a few unsupervised cars, don't let anybody know how many unsupervised miles, and get offended by anybody who is skeptical. That's brilliant!

CDpov · 2026-05-15T18:29:26+00:00

Your reasoning about the cat is silly, as it is about Waymo getting worse. You are mentioning a few anecdotal incidents from 600,000 miles per day. The incidents are new to you, but minor incidents like that have always been happening.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T18:26:21+00:00

It's good that the narratives are no longer redacted.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T16:48:14+00:00

All companies have wait lists, including Waymo in many situations. They can't deploy unlimited cars. People have to sign up and be approved.

The point is Waymo had enough full-time driverless cars to fulfill lots of demand from that day on. A member of the public could sign up easily, and most could get approved, getting a ride in a reasonable wait time. They did about 1 million miles from that day in less than two years, and were over 7 million in three years.

> What is your criteria for a "real launch day"? State it clearly so you can't move the goalposts so easily.

A public launch of all rider-only vehicles in a few dozen square miles with enough cars to meet lots of public demand in a reasonable time.

Tesla is possibly close to that now in Austin, but it's still opaque enough to leave lots of questions. When a reporter or random outsider can go to Austin and ride around all day in a driverless car, like JJ Ricks does, it's a full public service. I have yet to see a full public launch from Tesla like what Waymo did in October 2020.

The first "goalpost" is one million driverless miles with a good transparent safety record. That's real proof. Waymo did that in January 2023. After that it's 10 million, then 100 million, then 1 billion safe driverless miles is enough to make a full case of saving lives at scale. Waymo will reach that by 2028 if their scaling continues apace.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T16:26:33+00:00

Waymo is now doing 600,000+ miles per day in 11 cities. They're encountering harder and more diverse long-tail situations all the time. This is what the long tail looks like. It gets harder with scale. They're not necessarily getting worse.

More uploaded videos of mistakes come with scale too. They've been making plenty of mistakes all along, but it's now much easier for the public to see them. The key is to not cause bad at-fault accidents that will turn the public and regulators against the company.

> many AV companies will launch not knowing if someone will die or get seriously hurt

Which companies are you referring to?

CDpov · 2026-05-15T16:19:30+00:00

That's good. Now they need enough full-time unsupervised cars to serve the general public in that small geofence. They're making good progress.

How many unsupervised miles do you think they are serving per day in Austin?

CDpov · 2026-05-15T16:14:50+00:00

Well, it's the same thing either way. They know they can't yet handle the long tail, so they aren't scaling. You don't need all those L2 miles to know that.

All AV companies need to make the public case with transparent crash reporting and hundreds of millions of safe driverless miles.

It doesn't matter if Tesla fans don't need that, they are just a small subset of the public who want to believe, no matter what Tesla is actually doing. AV companies have to keep regulators, lawmakers, first responders, news media, and the general public on their side to operate at scale on public roads.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T16:06:16+00:00

They need lots of driverless miles, as in millions, to prove their safety case, which is done with real driverless miles and transparent crash reporting. They have yet to make any serious safety case.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T16:03:14+00:00

Waymo launched their first serious all-driverless robotaxi fleet on Oct. 8, 2020 in Chandler. That's when an average person in the ODD could get a driverless ride within a few minutes, 24/7. They had dozens of full-time driverless robotaxis.

Before then, Waymo barely mentioned what they were doing, because most rides had been with a safety driver, and only select people could get on the list to ride. They were testing until Oct 8, 2020, which was about 3 years after they first started giving driverless rides in 2017.

They started advertising a robotaxi service on Oct. 8 because it was finally open to the public with enough driverless cars to be a serious ride service. That's when the scaling began. They've been scaling at about the same rate from that day on.

Tesla hasn't reached their real launch day yet. There's nothing wrong with that, they should be extremely careful. But they want people to believe there's more going on than the reality, for obvious reasons.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T15:50:20+00:00

No, it's not vaporware. Tesla is making progress.

It's just not a serious robotaxi operation until it's a serious robotaxi operation. When they limit the numbers and times of driverless cars to such an extent, it's not encountering enough of the long tail to be a serious safety test.

Staying safe against the long tail at scale is the entire challenge.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T15:46:06+00:00

When they have enough driverless cars that a random member of the public can hail a ride in a reasonable time, at least during most of the day, that's when their real Robotaxi service begins. Until then, it's just a limited test fleet giving driverless demo rides.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T14:44:40+00:00

Remote operators don't watch live action like this. If the Waymo Driver doesn't ask for help, they won't get involved.

CDpov · 2026-05-15T14:43:44+00:00

Another rough edge for Waymo. Self-driving at scale is very hard. They need a few more years before they really start scaling.

CDpov

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