STORY: Tesla’s robotaxi service is experiencing significant operational problems in Texas, raising questions about CEO Elon Musk’s ambitious vision for a near future full of driverless cars.
Reuters testing in Dallas, Houston and Austin found long wait times exceeding 30 minutes, limited availability and navigation problems.
In one case, a 20‑minute trip in Dallas stretched to nearly two hours.
The service remains confined to those three Texas cities despite Musk predicting last July that robotaxis would serve half the U.S. population by the end of 2025.
Much of Tesla’s $1.6 trillion valuation hinges on investor belief that the company will soon unleash a vast fleet of robotaxis.
But analysts say the expansion is moving slower than expected, with Musk now describing a more “cautious approach” to avoid injuries or fatalities.
In the meantime, experts have raised concerns about the technology’s limits, including Peter Stone, a computer science professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
“People, at least so far, tend to be much better at unexpected situations and being able to reason about something that you’ve never seen before. But to be able to figure out on the fly what to do, especially if you’re using a machine learning-based system, it relies critically on the training data that’s been given. And if you come up with a completely, what’s known as out of distribution, which is sort of a code word for just new or novel situation, then it’s going to be much more difficult for a software-based system to react than people are.”
Police in Austin said Tesla’s robotaxis tend to ignore posted speed limits, noting that vehicles in test rides last year drove 5 mph above the speed limit.
Since August, Tesla has reported 15 robotaxi crashes in Austin to federal regulators.
Most did not involve injuries, but one involved someone being sent to the hospital.
Tesla has requested that all information about the incidents be kept confidential, according to police.
Tesla did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
