After much fanfare and a slew of Elon Musk’s usual promises, Tesla’s (TSLA) Robotaxi officially launched in Austin, Texas, on June 22.
Musk, unsurprisingly, is glowing over the early feedback, sharing a thread on X via Tesla’s official account featuring user experiences from rides in the autonomous vehicles.
Riders reported smooth stops, slowing down for speed bumps, and even an instance where the Robotaxi halted for a pedestrian in real time.
One user noted trying to tip the Robotaxi through the app only to get a screen saying, “Just Kidding” — since no human driver operates the vehicle, tips aren’t accepted.
While the initial group of riders was carefully selected and consisted of strong Tesla supporters, the positive coverage arrives at a critical time for Musk, who has faced significant negative backlash this year.
His work with the Trump administration on founding and running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), coupled with his departure from Tesla’s daily operations, dealt a blow to the company earlier this year. Many Tesla owners sold their vehicles in protest, signaling waning confidence in Musk.
Now, however, Musk faces a new, well-funded challenger.
Amazon’s autonomous rideshare company is setting its sights on Tesla’s Robotaxi.
Though Tesla’s Robotaxi might seem like a Tesla-exclusive innovation to casual observers, the race in autonomous vehicles is far from Tesla-only.
Alphabet (GOOGL)-owned Waymo, initially launched in 2009 as the Self-Driving Car Project, has expanded services to San Francisco, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and is adding Atlanta this summer.
And now Amazon is entering the fray in a major way.
Zoox, Amazon’s autonomous rideshare subsidiary, recently opened a massive 220,000-square-foot robotaxi production facility in Hayward, California, capable of manufacturing more than 10,000 vehicles annually. The company says this expansion will create hundreds of jobs in the Bay Area.
Founded in 2014, Zoox began testing its vehicles by mid-2018, navigating challenging urban environments like San Francisco’s Financial and North Beach Districts, as well as Las Vegas.
Zoox’s rapid progress worried Musk enough that Tesla filed a lawsuit in 2019 alleging Zoox misused proprietary Tesla information and trade secrets. Musk “actually had a fair argument for this,” as several former Tesla employees had joined Zoox. The lawsuit was settled in April 2020 after Zoox acknowledged these employees possessed Tesla documents related to logistics when they joined.
Zoox plans a full commercial launch later this year in the same cities where it tested, with extensive documentation available on its website.
While Musk’s Robotaxi launch appears to be off to a promising start, he remains the most vocal supporter of technology that ironically trails behind competitors. Musk had initially promised fully self-driving vehicles would be on the roads by 2020.
Waymo currently leads the space, having completed 10 million trips as of May 2020 and planning to expand testing to New York City next. Zoox, though a later entrant, is gearing up to compete aggressively, backed by its new large-scale production facility.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s Robotaxi is limited to a geofenced area in Austin and is not yet open to the general public. If Musk hopes to catch up with rivals and rebuild Tesla’s reputation, he’ll need to accelerate development—and fast.
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