Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that robotaxis will be launched in Austin, Texas, by the end of June. The company plans to expand the service to Los Angeles and San Francisco following the Austin debut.
The robotaxi service will initially start with about 10 vehicles in Austin. Tesla intends to rapidly scale up to thousands of vehicles if the launch is successful and without incidents.
These robotaxis will be Model Y vehicles equipped with FSD Unsupervised. Tesla employees will remotely monitor the fleet, reducing the need for monitoring as confidence grows.
Tesla's approach relies on camera-based systems and computer vision. Musk believes this approach is superior to using sophisticated sensors like lidar and radar.
Musk addressed a decline in Tesla's EV sales, attributing it to factory retooling for the Model Y. He stated that demand has rebounded significantly since then.