{"id":29884,"date":"2025-06-18T15:59:34","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T15:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29884"},"modified":"2025-06-18T16:24:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T16:24:14","slug":"teslas-robotaxi-long-promised-by-elon-musk-joins-a-crowded-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29884","title":{"rendered":"Tesla\u2019s Robotaxi, Long Promised by Elon Musk, Joins a Crowded Field"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Austin is known for live music, Texas\u2019 premier public university and being home to tech companies. It is also becoming a laboratory for autonomous vehicles.<\/p>\n

Driverless Waymo taxis, owned by Google\u2019s parent company, regularly drop off diners at Austin\u2019s famous barbecue joints. Box-shaped, four-wheeled robots operated by Avride, a start-up working with Uber Eats, deliver Thai takeout to customers downtown. Zoox, owned by Amazon, and Volkswagen are separately testing autonomous taxis here.<\/p>\n

Tesla, the electric car company based in Austin, recently joined the party, rolling out self-driving Model Ys ahead of a taxi service that is expected to begin offering rides as soon as Sunday. The vehicles, which the company calls Robotaxis, are part of an audacious effort by Elon Musk, Tesla\u2019s chief executive, to leap ahead of Waymo, which dominates a nascent business that someday could be worth tens of billions of dollars and perhaps much more.<\/p>\n

But the busy streets of Austin show that Tesla will face significant competition and other challenges. It will have to engage in painstaking experimentation to perfect its technology, which some autonomous-driving experts have criticized for having fewer safeguards than those operated by Waymo and other companies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Also, Tesla is starting from behind. Waymo has been driving paying passengers for years in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and started its commercial service in Austin in March in partnership with Uber.<\/p>\n

A small fleet of Tesla Robotaxis will begin carrying passengers in Austin on June 22, Mr. Musk said on X last week but added that the company may delay the start of the service. But analysts expect the cars will be available only to company employees or invited guests. The service will probably not be available to the general public for several months, analysts said.<\/p>\n

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Austin is known for live music, Texas\u2019 premier public university and being home to tech companies. It is also becoming a laboratory for autonomous vehicles.Driverless Waymo taxis, owned by Google\u2019s parent company, regularly drop off diners at Austin\u2019s famous barbecue joints. Box-shaped, four-wheeled robots operated by Avride, a start-up working with Uber Eats, deliver Thai takeout to customers downtown. Zoox, owned by Amazon, and Volkswagen are separately testing autonomous taxis here.Tesla, the electric car company based in Austin, recently joined the party, rolling out self-driving Model Ys ahead of a taxi service that is expected to begin offering rides as soon as Sunday. The vehicles, which the company calls Robotaxis, are part of an audacious effort by Elon Musk, Tesla\u2019s chief executive, to leap ahead of Waymo, which dominates a nascent business that someday could be worth tens of billions of dollars and perhaps much more.But the busy streets of Austin show that Tesla will face significant competition and other challenges. It will have to engage in painstaking experimentation to perfect its technology, which some autonomous-driving experts have criticized for having fewer safeguards than those operated by Waymo and other companies.Also, Tesla is starting from behind. Waymo has been driving paying passengers for years in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and started its commercial service in Austin in March in partnership with Uber.A small fleet of Tesla Robotaxis will begin carrying passengers in Austin on June 22, Mr. Musk said on X last week but added that the company may delay the start of the service. But analysts expect the cars will be available only to company employees or invited guests. The service will probably not be available to the general public for several months, analysts said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29886,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29884"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29887,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29884\/revisions\/29887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}