Tesla launches Robotaxi service in Bay Area, but theres a (human) catch

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Tesla launches Robotaxi service in Bay Area

Not entirely autonomous.

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Stan Schroeder

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tesla robotaxi

Is a Robotaxi still a Robotaxi if there's a driver in the driver's seat? Credit: bloomberg/getty image

As recently promised by CEO Elon Musk, Tesla has launched its Robotaxi service in the Bay Area — but the "robo" part is a bit dodgy right now.

Tesla's AI account on X posted a coverage map on Thursday, with a big chunk of San Francisco, San Jose, and everything in between being covered by the service. Musk retweeted the tweet, saying that "you can now ride-hail a Tesla in the SF Bay Area, in addition to Austin."

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Tesla fans will undoubtedly be happy to see the service expand so quickly - it launched less than two months ago in Austin, and the coverage area was expanded to a wider area in Austin after a couple of weeks.

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But as Electrek pointed out, in Bay Area the Robotaxi service is very different from the one in Austin, where the cars are really driving themselves, with no one present in the driver's seat (though the company does use human supervisors in the passenger seat).

In the Bay Area, however, there's a driver in the driver's seat. Their job is to basically use Tesla's Full-Self Driving set of autonomous driving features, allowing the car to drive itself but constantly supervising what it does, always ready to take over if the car makes an error.

Politico noted that Tesla doesn't have a permit to run an autonomous driving service in California, meaning that it can't launch a truly driverless Robotaxi service there.

The news comes after Alphabet's Waymo picked up its expansion plans. The company recently announced it will launch its autonomous ride-hailing service in Dallas next year, on top of previously announced expansion in Miami and Washington D.C.

Stan Schroeder

Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.

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