Tesla «Full Self Driving» & Robotaxi News in Texas, China, & LA–NYC

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

Or support our Kickstarter campaign!

There are a lot of updates out there this week about Tesla “Full Self Driving” (FSD) and Tesla robotaxis. I’m going to try to cover this news here as objectively as possible, but with extra useful context in order to try to provide a relatively complete picture of all of this news. Note that whether you are a Tesla hater (because of Elon Musk’s broader activities and harms to society) or a Tesla shareholder, you may not like some of this reporting, but it’s our job to be as objective as possible in covering what is happening.

Tesla Robotaxis in Austin

Tesla has started offering Robotaxi rides to select members of the public in Austin, Texas. These are vehicles without a human driver onboard. So far, it seems to only be one or a few cars, and Tesla also a trailing car with a human onboard trailing behind the Robotaxi — presumably, in case something goes wrong and the driverless car needs to be taken over or the human passenger onboard needs help.

Note that in that last video, the user (who is known for his drone footage of Tesla Giga Texas construction and development), tried to reroute the Robotaxi about 10 minutes into the video, but he then found out he could not do so. You can do so in a Tesla Robotaxi with a human supervisor onboard.

There are all kinds of takes on this development and these and other early videos. One important question is why this step was taken in the past day by Tesla. Is it because this is just naturally where the technological development is? Or is it because Tesla has a quarterly shareholder call in less than a week to wrap up 2025 numbers and the company needs a win? More likely than not, the financial results won’t look great after a year that again saw declining sales, 10% below 2023’s numbers, and after Tesla lost a lot of its previously regular revenue from regulatory credit sales due to policy changes in the USA. However, Tesla optimists think this is just naturally the stage Tesla is at with robotaxi testing — after doing a bit of testing with human supervision onboard for the past several months — and it is indicative of Tesla getting close to fully driverless and supervision-less Robotaxis. Critics counter with the point: So why does the company have human-driven Teslas trailing the Robotaxis? If the Robotaxis are ready to go without human supervision, there’s no need for such cars, and if they aren’t ready to go without human supervision, why not just have the humans stay in the front seat instead of driving a whole other car around?

I think it’s clear that critics and skeptics are going to say that real, mass Tesla robotaxi deployment isn’t close to ready and this is all a scam for the cameras and the stock. Tesla optimists will say it’s just the natural progression of careful testing and how other companies have done it in the past. (I have seen that claim made, but I don’t recall if Waymo and others did indeed use that method when they started driverless rides years ago. Seeming to confirm my thoughts, Google Gemini writes, “Waymo did not generally use trailing cars with human drivers to follow its robotaxis when launching commercial services. Instead, they utilized a phased approach, initially testing with human safety drivers in the front seat, then transitioning to fully driverless vehicles. Remote operators (Fleet Response) were used to assist in ambiguous situations.” Again, that’s what I remembered, and it’s not clear why Tesla is going from human supervisors in the seat to human supervisors in a car right behind the Robotaxi.)

Tesla FSD Transfers Ending?

Two and a half years ago, Elon Musk said that Tesla would finally offer something customers had been asking for. He said Tesla owners who had bought FSD but didn’t have the latest FSD hardware in their cars could buy a new Tesla and transfer FSD to that car without paying for it again. He said that would only be an option for that one quarter (Q3 2023). However, then he offered it again in a future quarter, and then again, and so on. I actually thought it wasn’t still offered, but apparently it has been — just more quietly.

Elon Musk is again saying, though, that this is the last quarter this will be possible. He already announced recently that Tesla would stop selling FSD on February 14, only offering it as a subscription after that. So, there is some expectation that this is for real now and this is the last chance for people who bought FSD to transfer it to a new vehicle. That said, there’s also a class action lawsuit going through the courts on this matter, so we also have to see where that goes.

Moments ago, I did get the following email from Tesla:

Elon Musk’s Tesla FSD China Comments Refuted

Elon Musk recently said that Tesla FSD Supervised could be approved in China as early as next month. However, China Daily, which is state-backed media in China, is refuting that claim. “According to foreign media reports, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on January 22 that Tesla’s driver-supervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) system is expected to be approved in China as early as next month, potentially close to its approval timeline in Europe. However, a reliable source told China Daily that this news is untrue,” the media outlet reports.

LA–NYC Tesla FSD Drive without Interventions

A “Cannonball Run” and now self-driving enthusiast, Alex Roy, has gone on a road trip with two others from Los Angeles to New York City in a Tesla using FSD and not disengaging once. Well, he did so once, by accident when he bumped the steering wheel, but he admitted to that. This was effectively to see if Tesla could finally deliver on Elon Musk’s promise in 2016 that a Tesla would drive from LA to NYC by itself by the end of 2017. I don’t think Musk is going to return to that idea, since he is nearly a decade behind schedule, but a couple of cars have now done so as FSD has gotten better.

I think this is one where people have to see and admit that FSD has gotten much better and is finally living up to some 2016 predictions for 2017, more or less. That doesn’t necessarily mean it is ready to be used for widespread robotaxi service — obviously! But it is clearly much better than it was a few years ago.

However, also note that this still doesn’t actually live up to Musk’s 2016 predictions. A commenter on that article noted that Musk actually said a Tesla would drive from “a home in L.A., to Times Square … without the need for a single touch, including the charging.” Remember that old “snake charger” concept from 2015? Also, Musk said in January 2016 (a full decade ago) that “In ~2 years, summon should work anywhere connected by land & not blocked by borders, eg you’re in LA and the car is in NY.” So, in 2018, one was supposed to be able to summon their car from San Francisco, California, to Miami, Florida, with the touch of a button.