It appears that Tesla CEO Elon Musk may have once again duped his fans and investors — which, these days, is an increasingly meaningless distinction.
Last week, Musk made huge waves when he announced that the automaker’s Robotaxi service would finally be giving rides in Austin, Texas, without a human “safety monitor” in the car — something he promised would’ve been the case since day one.
What Musk left out of that announcement, however, was that the human supervisors were moved to another car that followed the robotaxi instead, a workaround that was as dishonest as it was impractical.
Now, the EV blog Electrek reports another bit of Musk subterfuge. Based on what the service’s customers are saying, it appears that, at this moment, none of the Robotaxi rides that Tesla has been giving are “unsupervised.”
The most convincing testimony comes from Tesla enthusiast David Moss, who made a name for himself by purportedly driving 10,000 miles on FSD v14 without any interventions. Dedicated as he is to the Tesla cause, he traveled to Austin to try out an “unsupervised” Robotaxi ride — but was left sorely disappointed. After a gobsmacking 42 rides, every single one he got came with a human safety monitor.
“This was also my 5th ride in a row with the supervisor in the drivers seat,” he complained on X. (Typically, the safety monitor sits in the front passenger seat.)
To be fair to Tesla, it looks like the “unsupervised” rides stopped after a massive winter storm slammed the country on Saturday, including Austin. The service has resumed since then, but Tesla has not communicated any potential changes in how the Robotaxis operate to the public.
It’s worth asking why the unsupervised rides were launched just two days before a winter storm that everyone knew was coming. (Electrek implies it may have something to do with Tesla having to report its fourth quarter results from last year on January 28, which revealed that for that quarter, profits were down a staggering 61 percent compared to the same period last year.)
In any case, this seems like a another classic Musk bait-and-switch. The Robotaxi service has not lived up to his myriad outrageous promises, such as that it would have thousands of cars on the road within months of launching, or indeed would launch providing rides without any supervision in the car. The self-driving cabs have also been involved in numerous accidents and have been caught violating traffic laws, drawing the attention of federal regulators.
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