Tesla Launches Robotaxi In Austin: Elon Musk Calls It A 'Culmination Of A Decade Of Hard Work'

Tesla Inc. TSLA has officially launched the Robotaxi in Austin as the self-driving taxi race in the U.S. shifts into gear.

What Happened: The rollout, which was a small-scale event with over 10 Tesla Model Y Robotaxis, took place in Austin's South Congress neighborhood on Sunday.

The event was invite-only and Tesla created a dedicated app for the riders, who were mostly social media influencers, to book rides similar to other ride-hailing apps like Uber Technologies Inc. UBER.

Tesla also had safety monitors seated in the front seat during the rides. The safety monitors were Tesla employees overseeing the operations, though there were no confirmations about how much control they had, given that the Robotaxi was operating on Unsupervised FSD.

The EV giant’s CEO, Elon Musk, took to social media to hail the launch on the social media platform X on Sunday. Musk called the launch a "culmination of a decade of hard work" in his post and shared that both the AI Chip, as well as the software team responsible for the Robotaxi, "were built from scratch within Tesla."

Why It Matters: The launch comes in as Tesla has been teasing the company's arrival in the self-driving taxis sector to take on players like Alphabet Inc.'s GOOGL GOOG Waymo as well as Amazon.com Inc.'s AMZN Zoox.

While Waymo had announced its expansion into more parts of California and the company is also conducting trials in other parts of the U.S., Zoox set up a second production facility in California, which could help the company scale its Robotaxi operations.

Tesla, meanwhile, has been under the scrutiny of safety regulators in the U.S. as the NHTSA has been reviewing the company's responses to the questions posed by the agency over FSD's performance in poor weather conditions.

Musk had previously also stated that Tesla is working closely with the billionaire's AI venture, xAI, to collaborate and develop robotics as well as autonomous driving.

Tesla scores well on Momentum, Quality and Growth metrics, but offers poor Value. For more such insights, sign up for Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings today!

Check out more of Benzinga’s Future Of Mobility coverage by following this link.

Read Next: