Elon Musk under pressure after announcing robotaxi takeover of major US city: ‘Waiting on regulatory approvals’
As commenters online clamored for updates on Tesla’s robotaxi expansion plans, CEO Elon Musk promised that Tesla autonomous vehicles would be offering paid rides in San Francisco within “a month or two,” Reuters reported on Thursday.
Musk blamed the delays on regulators, posting that Tesla was “waiting on regulatory approvals,” per Reuters.
The update came on the heels of Tesla’s rollout of roughly a dozen robotaxis in Austin, Texas, which has featured human monitors riding in the front passenger seat and has yielded mixed results, NBC News reported.
Dating back at least as far as 2016, Musk and Tesla have a history of broken promises surrounding the company’s autonomous-vehicle technology, per TechCrunch.
One customer even took the company to court over Tesla’s 2016 claims that its then-current vehicles would be capable of autonomous driving once a software update became available.
The customer won, with the court ordering Tesla to provide the required hardware updates for free and the judge calling Tesla’s claims “false advertising,” according to TechCrunch.
In 2019, Musk said he was “very confident” the company would have robotaxis on the road within one year, CNBC reported at the time.
The long-awaited robotaxi rollout comes at a crucial time for Tesla. The company’s electric-vehicle sales have plummeted even as the broader EV market has grown, and taxi-based services could go a long way toward stabilizing the business’s total offerings.
Falling sales continued through the second quarter of 2025, with Tesla announcing a 13% decline in vehicle deliveries compared to one year ago, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Even Musk himself has acknowledged that much of Tesla’s $1 trillion valuation represents a bet on the company’s autonomous-vehicle and AI technologies.
“Really the value of the company is primarily on the basis of autonomy,” Musk said in 2023, per CNBC.
Meanwhile, industry leader Waymo, owned by Google parent company Alphabet, announced in May that it already was offering 250,000 paid rides per week in 1,500 self-driving vehicles operating across multiple U.S. cities.
These figures gave Waymo a considerable head start over Tesla’s fledgling operation.
