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Tesla has been secretly testing out fully autonomous robotaxis in the Bay Area for several months, CEO Elon Musk revealed during the carmaker's earnings call this week.
According to the billionaire, only Tesla staffers are authorized to make use of a prototype app that can summon vehicles using the company's Full Self-Driving software.
The cars still have a safety driver behind the wheel, however, demonstrating that Tesla still has a long road ahead of it in its attempt to catch up with the competition. Alphabet's Waymo has been operating driverless ridehailing services for years now.
The company also appears to be racing to meet Musk's characteristically overly ambitious timelines. Musk promised that Tesla would roll out a robotaxi service in California and Texas as soon as next year.
But even ignoring technical hurdles, the company has yet to secure a commercial license from regulators, a lengthy application process that could greatly delay Musk's plans.
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The company's driver assistance tech also still needs a lot of work. As of right now, Tesla's controversial Full Self-Driving system still requires drivers to be able to take over any time. In other words, it's still a long way from the level of autonomy a driverless robotaxi service presupposes.
Musk promised that an "unsupervised" version of FSD would be made available sometime next year, but given his abysmal track record of promising fully self-driving cars every year for a whole decade, we should take his latest claim with an enormous grain of salt.
Tesla's vision for a robotaxi service, as laid out in Musk's "Master Plan Part Deux," involves the establishment of a "Tesa Network" of autonomous vehicles that can complete rides on behalf of their owners. Put simply, it's "some combination of Airbnb and Uber," as Musk referred to it back in April.
"This really is a profound change," Musk said during the company's most recent earnings call, as quoted by The Verge. "Tesla will become more than a vehicle and battery manufacturer company at that point."
During the company's "We, Robot" event earlier this month, Musk also showed off an early prototype of a "Cybercab," a cramped two-seater vehicle without a steering wheel — or a charging port, for some reason.
In short, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Tesla is already testing an autonomous ridehailing service, something Musk has made the company's number one priority.
But given the sheer amount of work still ahead of it, chances are we won't see a mature version for at least several years.
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