Faced with regulatory hurdles, Tesla CEO Elon Musk pledges to launch driverless ride service by 2025

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said Wednesday the electric carmaker will launch driverless ride-hailing services to the public in California and Texas next year, a bold statement that could face criticism Significant regulatory and technical challenges.

“We think next year we’ll be able to have self-driving Teslas offering paid rides,” Musk said during Tesla’s quarterly earnings call. Tesla currently offers an app-based ride-hailing service to employees in the San Francisco Bay Area, he said. His statement further emphasized and expanded on the promise he made two weeks ago at the Tesla robotaxi launch event, where he said he expected to launch “unsupervised” autonomous taxis on some Tesla vehicles in 2025. Driving skills. The incident caused its stock price to plummet. On Wednesday, however, Tesla won over some investors by predicting a sharp increase in vehicle sales next year.

Particularly in California, the company will face a tough challenge getting the licenses needed to offer fully self-driving services to paying customers.

Alphabet’s Waymo, which offers self-driving cars for paid rides in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and Phoenix, Arizona, spent years logging millions of rides before getting its first license from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). Miles of testing. The agency regulates ride-hailing services.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles, which oversees the testing and deployment of autonomous vehicles in the state, told Reuters Tesla last reported using its autonomous vehicle testing license in 2019. This license requires a safety driver.

The agency said the company does not have and has not applied for a driverless testing permit.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

As for rides for employees in the Bay Area, the CPUC said Tesla doesn’t need a license because employees are not considered passengers.

At Tesla’s robot taxi event on October 10, Musk launched a two-seat, two-door “Cybercab” without a steering wheel and pedals that will use cameras and artificial intelligence to navigate the road.

On Wednesday, he acknowledged potential difficulties in California, saying “it’s not something we have complete control over” but adding “I would be shocked if we don’t get approval next year.”

Texas has far fewer regulatory requirements for self-driving cars than California, but companies typically conduct months or years of testing before deploying paid services.

Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system, called Full Self-Driving (FSD), is a cornerstone of Tesla’s robotaxi ambitions but has faced skepticism from regulators. Last week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched an investigation into 2.4 million Tesla vehicles equipped with FSD after four crashes, including a fatal crash in 2023.

Still, the idea of ​​Tesla launching a fleet of robotaxis sent the ride-hailing app’s shares down 2.3% in after-hours trading.

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