In June, Tesla invited users to experience its driverless ride-hailing cars on public roads in Austin, Texas, in an initial trial with pricing of each trip costing $US4.20.
Since then, the invitation list has grown with hundreds of driverless rides in Tesla’s Robotaxi being taken by invited riders in a geo-fenced area of the city of Austin, which has also expanded in its size.
Now, the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, has said that the Robotaxi service is already expanding into its second state, California, specifically the large Bay Area.
In a post on X, Musk said: “You can now ride-hail a Tesla in the SF Bay Area, in addition to Austin”.
This was off the back of a post by Tesla AI on X, which stated that invites for Robotaxi rides in the Bay Area were going out, allowing those riders to download the app and try the service themselves.
The geofenced area is much larger than what Tesla began with in Austin, less than 40 days before the latest expansion in California.
It is also much larger than the areas Waymo, its competitor, currently operates in around the Bay Area.
Some locals have suggested that the geofenced area covers a population of around 7 million people. It can also take over an hour to drive from the south to the northern end.
Last month, Tesla Owners Silicon Valley asked when the potential expansion into the Bay Area of Silicon Valley was expected on Tesla’s roadmap.
Musk responded promptly with a timeline of one to two months as Tesla was currently awaiting regulatory approval in California.
Reports from last month also showed that Tesla was making progress in Arizona, with the state’s Department of Transportation confirming that Tesla’s Robotaxi approvals were in the works there.
This goes to show that Tesla’s pace of expansion of its trial service is much faster than what many expected, with the general public having access to the service in the coming months looking highly likely.
This also comes within the fortnight of its last earnings call, where Musk shared the company’s internal goal of having the Robotaxi service available to half of the US’s population by the end of 2025.
We will keep a lookout for this expansion to see how this rollout pushes competition in the US as well as the expected international expansion of the service in 2026. After all, it provides a good roadmap for the future of road transportation that’s electric and autonomous.
Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.
