Elon Musk's Tesla robotaxi expanded to Austin without human safety drivers

Elon Musk-run EV titan Tesla has begun offering Tesla robotaxi service in Austin without a human safety driver seated in the vehicle.

The expansion of Tesla robotaxi in Austin brings the company closer towards fully autonomous transport.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Thursday brought to light the launch on X, his social media platform known as Twitter before his takeover. He wrote that Tesla had “just started Robotaxi drives in Austin with no safety monitor in the car”, and congratulated the company’s AI team.

The announcement follows Musk's recruitment appeal, encouraging engineers interested in “solving real-world AI” to join Tesla, adding that such work would “likely lead to AGI”.

Tesla’s head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said the company is starting with a small number of fully unsupervised vehicles alongside a wider robotaxi fleet that still includes safety monitors.

The development builds on a phase-wise rollout that kicked off in June 2025, when Tesla introduced robotaxi services in Austin on a limited basis. At the time, each Tesla robotaxi carried a safety operator in the front passenger seat, supposed to intervene when needed.

The robotaxi's early access was mainly restricted to influencers and a handful of selected customers.

The EV giant marked a leap in December 2025 by testing robotaxis in Austin without a safety driver in the front seat, reducing human oversight while maintaining controls everywhere else in the operation.

The latest launch is an expansion of those trials, although not every vehicle in the fleet will immediately start operating without supervision.

In light of what early riders shared on X, Tesla is charging passengers for these robotaxi rides. Observers reported the presence of a chase car, which follows the autonomous vehicles.