TechCrunch Mobility: Tesla’s ride-hailing gambit

The article discusses Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s ongoing efforts to reposition Tesla from primarily an electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer to an AI and robotics company, with a particular focus on self-driving cars and humanoid robots. Despite Tesla’s advanced EV technology and its Full Self-Driving Supervised system, fully autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots at scale remain unrealized goals. Tesla’s initial step toward this vision was the launch of a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, where Tesla employees currently supervise rides, falling short of Musk’s original vision of a fully autonomous, owner-rentable robotaxi fleet. Recently, Tesla announced plans to launch a robotaxi service in California’s Bay Area, but regulatory hurdles persist. Notably, Tesla has not yet applied for the necessary permits from the California DMV to operate autonomous vehicles commercially. Instead, Tesla has started a ride-hailing service using human drivers from its own employee pool, without any autonomous driving involved. This move appears to be largely for optics, aiming to