Tesla’s robotaxi debut in Austin will be invite-only and have a lot of teleoperators, Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas said.
During a recent visit to Tesla’s Palo Alto office, the analyst got details on what the EV company’s robotaxi launch will look like.
“Austin’s a ‘go’ but fleet size will be low,” Jonas wrote in a note published Friday. “Think 10 to 20 cars.”
Tesla said in an April 22 earnings call that the “pilot launch” will have a limited fleet.
The analyst also wrote that the robotaxis will operate on public roads, that the service will be invite-only, and that there will be many teleoperators on hand.
“Public roads. Invite only. Plenty of tele-ops to ensure safety levels (“we can’t screw up”),” Jonas wrote. “Still waiting for a date.”
In the context of robotaxis, teleoperators often mean that a remote employee can take some level of control of the vehicle, typically when the autonomous driver gets stuck.
That’s different from how companies like Waymo or Zoox handle tricky driving scenarios.
While both companies have remote human workers on hand, an employee can never take control of the vehicle’s steering or pedals.
When a vehicle gets stuck, the remote workers can either suggest a path to take or provide more information regarding the vehicle’s environment so the autonomous driver can figure out how to get out of the situation.
One example Waymo published on YouTube included a scenario when an emergency vehicle blocks a robotaxi’s path.
A remote worker will answer a question such as, “Is the emergency vehicle blocking all indicated lanes?” This will provide more environmental context for the autonomous driver to make a decision.
Remote-controlled cars
It’s unclear how much control Tesla’s teleoperators will have over the robotaxis for the Austin debut.
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Business Insider’s Grace Kay previously reported there had been discussion around using remote operators as safety drivers for the launch, citing two people familiar with the matter.
A job listing from Tesla for a software engineer on the “Teleoperation team” says that, as the company iterates on the AI that powers the cars and robots, it will “need the ability to access and control them remotely.”
The autonomous driving community is debating how safe teleoperations are for a robotaxi service.
While there’s an industry-wide consensus on the need for human operators to monitor robotaxis and help with rare edge cases, some industry experts argue that a vehicle that can be fully remotely controlled has safety pitfalls.
Ex-Waymo CEO John Krafcik, who is highly skeptical of Tesla’s robotaxi proposition, previously told Business Insider that there are “safety risks” to teleoperations.
One study by a team of researchers at Coventry University’s Centre for Future Transport and Cities found that even a 300- to 500-millisecond latency, or around half a second, can challenge a teleoperator’s ability to control the vehicle even at slow speeds.
Jonas and a Tesla spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Tesla’s highly anticipated robotaxi launch has seen a lot of delays.
CEO Elon Musk has said several times that full autonomy and robotaxis were around the corner, only for him to miss his own deadline.
In 2019, Musk said Tesla would have over 1 million robotaxis by the end of the following year. That never materialized.
“I always bite off more than I chew,” he wrote in an X post in 2023, “then sit there with puffed out cheeks like a squirrel that ate too much.”