Elon Musk has been promising robotaxis since at least 2016. Back then, the idea sounded like a bit like science fiction, and Musk’s timeline was — as ever — aggressively optimistic. Nearly a decade later, fiction is expected to finally become fact: On June 12, Tesla (TSLA) is expected to show off its first real robotaxi pilot in Austin.
Except the reveal won’t quite be the sleek, driverless sci-fi fleet people might be imagining — and will be a big change from Musk’s early promise of fully driverless Teslas commanded by AI alone. The initial rollout reportedly will involve about 10 Tesla Model Ys equipped with the company’s full self-driving (FSD) software, and each car will be monitored by human operators ready to intervene remotely if things go sideways.
So this isn’t truly a fully autonomous debut. It’s a tightly controlled test with serious investor implications.
Musk has bet heavily that Tesla’s AI can outpace the rest of the pack. He said in 2022: “The overwhelming focus is on solving full self-driving. That’s essential. It’s really the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money or worth basically zero.” Investors once crowed about autonomous driving unlocking “trillions in market value” for the company, with claims that robotaxis would propel Tesla to global leadership. But Waymo (GOOGL) is already running fully autonomous services in cities across the U.S., logging hundreds of thousands of rides each week with a much safer public record.
Now, the question might be more than just whether Tesla can catch up. It could be about whether the company is anywhere close to the rest of the fleet. Push has come to shove. And Musk will have to finally put his cards on the table and show what’s in his hand.
Tesla’s pitch is that its approach will ultimately scale faster than anyone else’s. Millions of Teslas already on the road are logging miles and feeding data to the company’s AI. Tesla uses vision-only software, while rivals also rely on lidar and radar sensors and stick to pre-mapped routes, expanding methodically, city by city.
But scale doesn’t guarantee autonomy.
Tesla’s fleet remains at Level 2 — driver assistance — and the coming fleet in Austin is expected to have safety drivers or tight remote supervision. If the company leans heavily on tele-ops to keep its cars moving, it’s a sign that the FSD dream still needs human scaffolding, which could puncture both the hype and the vision.
Still, Tesla’s strategy is a bold one. If the system can reliably operate in real-world environments with minimal intervention, it could mark a turning point not just for Tesla but for the entire autonomous vehicle (AV) industry.
Tesla may be first in the headlines — but Waymo is first on the road.
Waymo’s fully driverless cars operate in Phoenix, San Francisco, and parts of Los Angeles and Austin; they’re coming to Atlanta, Miami, Washington, D.C., and even Tokyo soon. They handle complex city driving without anyone behind the wheel — and they do it at scale. As of mid-2025, Waymo is providing millions of driverless rides per quarter, with consistent safety records and publicly available data.
Tesla’s system, meanwhile, requires constant supervision from a human driver. And then there’s the safety record. Federal investigations have tied Tesla’s Autopilot and FSD systems to dozens of crashes, some fatal. The Department of Transportation is probing how Tesla’s systems handle edge cases such as glare, fog, and dust. And last year, the company recalled more than two million vehicles to add additional warnings and constraints on its driver-assistance software.
That’s not exactly the reputation you want when introducing robotaxis to the public.
John Krafcik, Waymo’s former CEO, hasn’t minced words. “Tesla has aspired to compete with Waymo for nearly 10 years, but they still don’t,” he told Business Insider. “They’re a car company with a driver-assist system. … They haven’t delivered a single fully autonomous revenue-generating ride yet, something Waymo is already doing a million times a month.”
From what we know about the Austin launch, this is less about full-on autonomy and more about optics. As Tesla sales cool, competition from China heats up, and Musk’s company faces more scrutiny as a result of his feuds, Tesla’s robotaxi dream is looking more like a lifeline than a luxury.
Tesla reportedly has asked city officials to keep details of the pilot under wraps, citing trade secrets. But analysts, including Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jones, say the robotaxis will operate in tightly geofenced areas, during good weather, and with significant behind-the-scenes support. In other words, the “autonomous” system may look more like a remote-controlled stunt than a glimpse of the future.
But if the pilot program goes smoothly, it will give Musk something he hasn’t had in a while: proof. Proof that Tesla can make robotaxis operate in the real world. Proof that investors can keep believing the long-term story. Proof that the AI he has spent years hyping might finally be road-ready.
Musk has promised that robotaxis will turn every Tesla into a money-printing asset. He has pitched a future in which you can send your car off to earn passive income while you’re at work. He’s also said that people buying anything other than a Tesla are essentially buying a horse.
That vision has kept Tesla’s valuation buoyed through missed deadlines and repeated delays.
So far, analysts have held steady. Wedbush’s Dan Ives said he’s keeping an “Outperform” rating and a $500 target, banking on Tesla’s AI future. Ives, a longtime Tesla bull, said Wedbush expects to see robotaxis deployed in 20 to 25 U.S. cities over the coming year.
He wrote, “We believe the vast majority of valuation upside looking ahead for Tesla is centered around the success of its autonomous vision taking hold with this key launch in Austin ahead.” Ives has estimated that AI and AVs are worth “at least $1 trillion alone for Tesla” and that Tesla will be “one of the best pure plays on AI over the next decade.”
In an analyst note, Stifel’s Stephen Gengaro echoed that sentiment: Tesla, with seven million cars outfitted for autonomy, could dominate once unsupervised robotaxis go live. He wrote: “Competitors’ fleets of just thousands of cars would only be able to serve a confined portion of the total addressable market, and would need to make significant capital expenditures to build out capital-intensive assets that take time to produce.”
Still, serious skeptics remain.
That’s why this Austin rollout matters. Can Tesla show that its self-driving tech is ready for prime time, even on a limited stage? Will regulators accept the company’s definitions of “autonomous”? And can Musk deliver something that isn’t just technically impressive but commercially viable? This week, we might start to find out. But with Musk, we’ve learned to expect more show than tell.
And this show’s been a long time coming.
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