Tesla’s Robotaxi Bait and Switch

I’m writing this column in the back of a robotaxi. In San Francisco, this is pretty normal. Last year I clocked up 35 hours in a Waymo, covering 447 autonomous miles over 89 trips. No doubt I’ll surpass those numbers this year, as the service’s coverage just expanded to freeways and I can now hail a 90-minute ride all the way south to San Jose’s airport.

Meanwhile, over in Austin, Texas, Tesla’s nascent robotaxi service just gave its first fully autonomous rides to ordinary passengers. Tesla bros went wild. “Pretty tough day for the so-called experts and Tesla skeptics!” boasted an excited YouTuber. When one passenger uploaded a film of his ride to X, it garnered 1.7 million views.

The juxtaposition is curious. Waymo already operates in six American cities and last spring hit a milestone of a million fully autonomous rides every month. A woman even gave birth in one last month. Yet a handful of autonomous Teslas, in a single city, is being heralded—very prematurely—as a defining moment for autonomous cars.