Musk wants to get rid of Tesla’s robotaxi babysitters ‘by the end of the year’

Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted the company would be able to remove the safety monitors from its robotaxis “by the end of the year.” He also said Tesla would launch a robotaxi service in 8-10 new markets also before the end of 2025.

“We are expecting to have no safety drivers in at least large parts of Austin by the end of this year,” Musk said in an earnings call with investors. “So within a few months, we expect to have no safety drivers at all, at least in parts of Austin. We’re obviously being very cautious about the deployment.”

Tesla’s robotaxis in Austin and San Francisco include safety monitors with access to a kill switch — a fallback that Waymo currently doesn’t need for its commercial robotaxi service. The safety monitor sits in the passenger seat in Austin, and in the driver seat in San Francisco. Musk has said that the human monitors are only there because Tesla is being “paranoid about safety,” and not because of some deficiency in the company’s technology.

“Obviously even one accident will be front page headline news worldwide,” Musk added. “So it’s better for us to take a cautious approach here.”

Musk also said that he expects Tesla to be operating robotaxis in 8-10 new states before the end of the year, barring no regulatory hiccups. He cited Nevada, Florida, and Arizona as among those future markets. It’s unclear how many robotaxis Tesla is operating in Austin; the last number the company gave to state officials was about 20. Tesla’s robotaxis in Austin have covered “more than a quarter million miles,” while its vehicles in San Francisco have driven “more than a million,” said Ashok Elluswamy, VP of AI software.

Tesla will have safety monitors in the vehicles it launches in new markets, Musk clarified. “Even if the regulators weren’t making us do it, we’d still do that as the right, cautious approach to a new market.”

Previously, Musk had predicted that Tesla would have robotaxis available to “50 percent” of the US population by the end of the year, and that Tesla customers would be able to update their own vehicles to drive autonomously without supervision by the end of 2025.