
Will it be possible for a non Tesla employee to ride in a fully autonomous Tesla vehicle anywhere in the world by the end of 2025?
Has to be a service that non Tesla employees can use. Has to be a point to point ride of at least 1 mile. Has to be on public roads in a city.
Boring company tunnels don’t count.
Update 2025-02-09 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): - No driver: The vehicle must be fully autonomous with no driver present.
Open to non Tesla employees: The service must be available to the general public, not just Tesla employees.
Point-to-point ride: The ride must travel from one distinct location to another over a distance of at least 1 mile (routes that simply loop or circle do not qualify).
Operates on public roads: The ride must occur on public roads (excluding places like Boring Company tunnels).
Update 2025-03-27 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Clarification on 'anywhere':
The term anywhere in the world means that the autonomous ride must occur in at least one location in the world.
It does not require that the service be available in every location globally.
Update 2025-03-27 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Clarification on Service Duration
Ongoing Service Requirement: The Robo-Taxi service must be an ongoing operation rather than a one-off demo or short-term stunt.
Temporary Trials: If the service is only a temporary demonstration lasting a few days or weeks, it should resolve as a no outcome.
Expansion Intention: If the service begins with a limited number of routes but shows clear plans for sustained and expanding operations, it qualifies for a yes resolution.
Update 2025-05-18 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): In the context of fully autonomous operation:
The system should generally align with Level 4 autonomy (e.g., similar to services like Waymo), meaning no human is in the driver's seat.
Tele-operation of the vehicle (a remote human driving the car) at normal driving speeds is not permitted.
Remote assistance (where a remote human helps the vehicle make a decision or navigate a non-standard situation after the vehicle requests help) is acceptable.
This assistance can be initiated even if the vehicle is moving at a very low speed (e.g., a few miles per hour) and indicates uncertainty; it does not strictly require the vehicle to have come to a complete stop on its own first.
Update 2025-06-23 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Regarding a safety monitor present in the passenger seat:
The creator is conflicted on this scenario and is considering a 50% PARTIAL resolution or a NO resolution if a safety monitor is present.
This is open to further discussion as the situation evolves.
Update 2025-06-24 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Regarding the “Open to non Tesla employees” criterion:
The creator confirms that a service available to a select group of non-employees (such as influencers) will qualify.
The phrase “available to the general public” was part of an AI summary and is not the official criterion.
Update 2025-06-24 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): To satisfy the ongoing service requirement, the creator has clarified that a continuous expansion of the number of passengers who can use the service would be one way to meet this criterion for a YES resolution.
First autonomous delivery a day ahead of schedule. No safety monitor in the car.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1938682871105102254
Update 2025-02-09
Open to non Tesla employees: The service must be available to the general public, not just Tesla employees.
Update 2025-06-24 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Regarding the “Open to non Tesla employees” criterion:
The creator confirms that a service available to a select group of non-employees (such as influencers) will qualify.
The phrase “available to the general public” was part of an AI summary and is not the official criterion.
I don't really get this change, I feel like it is contradicting what was previously stated in the description, and I don't think it is an improvement.
From what I understand, the idea is to know if Tesla offer an actual useful service, opening it only to influencers makes it more of an advertisement for Tesla (and for these influencers) than actual service.
Also I don't get how there could have real expansion intention with this restriction (it could be a first step, but it has to actually be open to the general public after it).
@dionisos I do think we're in a gray area currently. If nothing has changed by the end of 2025 I'd tend to agree that a taxi service is not exactly being offered. But it's unlikely that nothing will have changed by then.
@dreev What are the arguments to resolve it yes if it is only open to influencers (I mean, expect that it is now stated in the criteria, but what was the arguments for this change) ?
Was there a problem with waiting for it to open to the general public ?
@dionisos It seems anyone can sign up to go on the waiting list. If Tesla have selected like 100 people to get invites and they are all influencers then I can see an argument that although anyone can sign up, Tesla is being too selective and an ordinary person who has signed up early or later isn't likely to get an invite. You could try to solve this by selecting a number eg over 1000 invites needed but that 1000 number wasn't in the claim originally so adding it now seems like changing the claim and could add a problem as we might not know the number.
Honestly I don't see a problem here. If they only invite a couple hundred influencers then it is more like a celebrity transport service not a taxi service., This isn't what Tesla are aiming for, they will open it up to more people or they simply won't have enough people people using it to generate a realistic number of rides and revenue. Once influencers have streamed their first use, using it would be rare for most of them. Staying at a couple of hundred influencers until the end of year simply isn't going to happen.
@ChristopherRandles a couple of points a) people with low numbers (example: 2400 followers https://x.com/DevinOlsenn/status/1938109340717879515) are getting invites, I don't think they count as "influencers", and b) people with invites can bring a +1 on the ride, who can be anyone
This is not a typical "closed testing" situation.
@ChristopherRandles Two things: 1. There is no waiting list sign up. The link that has been posted claiming the be a waiting list is just a marketing solicitation. That's why you don't need to live in Austin to sign up.
2. I recommend you at least consider the goal of Tesla is not to truly launch a taxi service but rather to stifle criticism that progress in FSD has plateaued in hopes to buy their engineers more time to make needed progress. If that's the case, this will stay limited to those the most willing to release favorable videos.
I've said it before and I'm still convinced: this is Elizabeth Holmes selling a machine that she hasn't yet invented while assuming that by the time she actually needs to deliver the product, her engineers will have created it.
@WrongoPhD Oh man, you're even more cynical than me but I have no actual confidence you're wrong. Any ideas for better ways to operationalize the "is elon full of shit" question? It's frustrating when, no matter how events play out, both sides declare victory. I guess we Tesla detractors can at least admit that Tesla has delivered more than we expected at this point. I thought the most likely outcome was the launch date getting pushed at least into the fall.
@dreev I think my favorite market now is about fleet size. I wish it ended in 2025 but it's my expectation there will be no sincere attempt to scale, and I think Tesla will want to limit the number of YOLO L2 miles driven as tobotaxis.
Having in car safety monitors is worse than what I expected. I believed teloperators would be acting as the safety monitors but the miles driven would be kept to a minimum to lessen the risk of an accident. I do still think they'll move to that, albeit at a very small number.
Do you have any idea how many miles their robotaxi service has driven? Beyond the first day, I haven't seen number of miles driven which I expect to have been higher initially then after a few days/weeks. Miles driven would be another good metric, but I don't think it's possible to get that data.
@WrongoPhD Well, Tesla can now claim they have had a single ride of about 30 miles with no driver and no safety monitor (no passenger either, but it's a step to that direction :)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU16hXSSGKs&t=
@MarkosGiannopoulos to be accurate, Elon said there was no teleoperator intervention. He did not say there was no teleoperator monitoring, so we cannot say this ride didn't have a safety monitor.
@WrongoPhD Yeah, I meant in the car. We do not fully know how Wyamo does remote safety monitoring either.
@WrongoPhD To be accurate Elon wrote
There were no people in the car at all and no remote operators in control at any point. FULLY autonomous! To the best of our knowledge, this is the first fully autonomous drive with no people in the car or remotely operating the car on a public highway.
But as they have video I think you are right that it is likely someone remotely watched it and may well have had ability to tell it to stop but "didn't need to take control" as opposed to being unable to do anything.
First time is likely to be watched closely and video made available etc. Question really is does it become routine with no need for anyone to watch? Even then, it is easier than robo-taxi service which this question is about because no passenger for liability issues or for taxi customer to do something stupid. Makes sense to do riderless delivery before diver-less taxi.
I dissected Musk's statement a bit here: https://agifriday.substack.com/p/turkla
I pretty much agree with everyone in this thread and am specifically accusing Musk of equivocating by conflating "no interventions" and "no supervision". Basically, Musk's "FULLY autonomous" (emphasis his) in that announcement is a lie.
I currently believe (thanks to @WrongoPhD for helping me see it this way) that Tesla aims to string us along with these controlled demos while they finish getting to actual level 4 autonomy. (It's like the trope of lies from Marketing that Engineering has to scramble to make be true.) If they pull that off then us Tesla detractors are going to look like we've been pretty high on copium. At this point I'm very prepared to end up looking like an idiot. But I'm hopeful that the cheating will come to light. (Hopefully not via a faux-autonomous Tesla killing someone, like what happened with Uber's self-driving program.)
Any ideas for a more direct Manifold market about this fake-it-till-they-make-it claim? [EDIT: Ah, I had missed the number of robotaxis deployed market linked earlier. That's a good one.]
PS to @MarkosGiannopoulos: We do know how Waymo does safety monitoring. The reporting requirements for this stuff in California are elaborate and Waymo's nice and transparent about all this. Short version is the cars autonomously come to a stop and call a human when confused. No real-time remote disengagements, actual or counterfactual.
@dreev I was mostly referring to the number of remote operators/monitors they have per car. Some suspect Tesla is now and will be for some time on any 1:1 rate (and thus this is not a "real robotaxi". Any information on that?
I think this video of the first recorded safety intervention really makes it clear that despite being in the passenger seat, these are safety drivers.
@WrongoPhD (I originally answered here but want to keep all my musing collected in one place so I'm going to link to my answer here: https://manifold.markets/dreev/will-tesla-count-as-a-waymo-competi#zgj6sx5tqf )
Given the current advancements in autonomous driving technology, it’s clear that we’re heading toward a new era in mobility. However, there are still several regulatory, technological, and safety challenges that need to be addressed for fully autonomous vehicles to become a reality for the general public
"the removal of the safety driver is the biggest milestone in development of a true robotaxi, not an incremental step that can be ignored." https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2025/06/22/tesla-misses-robotaxi-launch-date-goes-with-safety-drivers/
This market must resolve NO in the case of on-board safety monitors.
What a joke that an "autonomous taxi" still requires human labour in the car.
@JackAllison Waymo had safety drivers (e.g. in the driver's seat, not the passenger's one) at the beginning as well. This is also what they are going to be doing in NY https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/18/waymo-cars-are-coming-to-new-york-with-a-driver-behind-the-wheel.html
@Toastbroti I think some will try it out a lot when first invited then drop down to little or no use shortly after. Steadily inviting more people doesn't necessarily increase rate of use. So perhaps not as interesting as an increase in the number of vehicles being used.
Still it is a lot better than going so badly that they don't invite more people until they figure out issues.
@ChristopherRandles Keep in mind, they have been testing with employees in California and Texas (e.g. people commuting to the factory) for a year now.