Tesla Robotaxis Are Now Driving Themselves in Austin: 'It Was Awesome' Tesla held an invite-only robotaxi experience this past weekend. Here's how it went.
By Sherin Shibu Edited by Melissa Malamut
Key Takeaways
- Tesla’s driverless taxi service rolled out in Austin on Sunday, with a handful of retail investors and social media influencers taking the first rides.
- Each robotaxi ride cost $4.20 and was supervised by a (human) Tesla employee in the passenger seat.
Tesla officially launched its first robotaxis on Sunday to a small group of invited users, marking the beginning of what CEO Elon Musk envisions as a promising new business.
The robotaxis are driverless 2025 Tesla Model Y cars outfitted with "unsupervised self-driving technology." For the launch, which took place in Tesla's hometown of Austin, per TechCrunch, a Tesla employee sat in the passenger seat as a safety precaution, but the passenger seat did not have a steering wheel or pedals.
The first riders were a small group of retail investors and social media influencers selected by Tesla. One recipient, Herbert Ong, said in a video on X that Tesla had extended invites to 14 people.
Ong, who conducts daily interviews with Tesla experts on X, noted from his experience in the robotaxi that the car was able to speed up and park well on its own. Passengers paid $4.20 for each ride.
Other early invitees also took to social media to livestream their experiences. In a Sunday video viewed 1.6 million times on X, Chuck Cook, one of the invitees to try the Tesla robotaxi, said he was impressed when the car navigated a parking lot "confidently," taking pedestrians and other cars into account. The robotaxi asked for a tip at the end of the ride, then said it was "just kidding."
Another influencer, Sawyer Merritt, who has over 900,000 followers on X, said on the platform that his robotaxi experience was "awesome" and that it was "pretty wild" to see a Tesla with no one in the driver's seat.
Meanwhile, Dongjin (DJ) Seo, a co-founder and vice president of implants at Musk-led Neuralink, wrote in a post on X on Sunday that the robotaxi ride he took was "an incredible display of real-world AI."
The videos taken by early invitees show the robotaxis driving short distances, navigating turns and intersections, and parking successfully.
Here is my experience (in 4K) from earlier today in one of the world's first ever public Tesla Robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas with FSD Unsupervised! No-one is in the driver seat and the safety monitor in the passenger seat does not have a steering or pedals.
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 22, 2025
It was awesome. pic.twitter.com/2Ied9SYvUT
The best tech feels like magic because it's so normal you don't even notice it… until you do.
— DJ Seo (@djseo) June 23, 2025
Took a ride in a Tesla Robotaxi today.
In this clip, it pulls aside on a narrow street with construction, making room for an oncoming car that illegally turns into our lane.
The… pic.twitter.com/UZ9S13xGDO
Musk congratulated the Tesla AI software and chip design teams on Sunday, calling the robotaxi launch "successful" and noting that both the AI chip and software for self-driving cars were built from the ground up at Tesla.
"Culmination of a decade of hard work," Musk wrote.
Super congratulations to the @Tesla_AI software & chip design teams on a successful @Robotaxi launch!!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 22, 2025
Culmination of a decade of hard work.
Both the AI chip and software teams were built from scratch within Tesla.
Musk said last year at Cyber Roundup 2024, Tesla's annual shareholder meeting, that Tesla robotaxis could quickly expand around the country. There are already millions of Teslas on the road, with nearly 700,000 Teslas sold in the U.S. in 2024 alone. A software update could allow existing Teslas to act as robotaxis and earn money for owners.
"You can add or subtract your car to the fleet whenever you want," Musk said at the event.
The only other carmaker offering fully autonomous paid rides in the U.S. is Alphabet's Waymo. Waymo's cars rely on sensors and software to drive on their own. The company has a head start on robotaxis compared to Tesla: Waymo provides more than 250,000 paid robotaxi trips per week to cities like Phoenix, San Francisco, and Austin. The company is planning to bring autonomous ride-hailing services to Atlanta, Miami, and Washington D.C. next year.
A study published earlier this month by rideshare price comparison platform Obi found that the average price of a Waymo ride is $5.99 more than an average Lyft ride, and $4.85 more than an average Uber ride. However, the majority of respondents, 70%, are willing to pay extra for the Waymo experience instead of a regular ride consisting of interactions with a human driver.
