Tesla $TSLA ( ▼ 0.2% ) is taking another step toward fully autonomous ride hailing. Eyewitnesses on Sunday spotted at least two Tesla Robotaxis driving around Austin with no one inside the vehicle, meaning no safety monitors in the front seat and no passengers in the back.
CEO Elon Musk confirmed the sightings in a post on X, saying Tesla is now testing the service “with no occupants in the car.” That marks a notable shift from how the Robotaxi program has operated since launching in June, when Tesla employees were required to sit in the front seat as safety monitors.
The move signals progress toward a goal Musk laid out on Tesla’s most recent earnings call, where he said the company planned to remove safety drivers from Robotaxi operations in at least large parts of Austin by the end of the year. Musk reiterated that timeline just last week at an xAI event.
If Tesla can successfully run a driverless ride hailing service, it would narrow the gap with Google’s $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.72% ) Waymo, which currently leads the US market for autonomous taxis. Tesla’s longer term vision goes even further. The company wants to turn a large portion of its existing vehicle fleet into autonomous cars, allowing it to scale Robotaxi services quickly without building a separate lineup of vehicles.
That strategy is central to Tesla’s effort to be viewed as an AI company as much as an automaker. And Musk, unsurprisingly, is confident. Last week, he told a Google executive that Waymo “never really had a chance against Tesla.”