The Tesla Robotaxi is already rolling!

Tesla seems determined not to waste any time and is ramping up testing sessions for the Robotaxi at the Giga Texas site.

Tesla unveiled the Robotaxi on October 10th during a special event at Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, California. During the event, dozens of Robotaxi prototypes allowed select lucky guests to move around in the controlled environment of the studio, taking a little trip into the future. Are these vehicles already operational and ready to serve? Not at all! These demonstrations were conducted with automatic, not autonomous, cars. The routes were programmed into their artificial intelligence, and they only had to reproduce them in a completely controlled environment, without surprises or unforeseen events. Releasing them into the urban jungle in total autonomy is a whole other matter!

The CEO Elon Musk announced that the Robotaxi will go into production in 2026, putting the vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals on the road in about two years. The minimum necessary to successfully develop such an ambitious vehicle. And Tesla doesn’t seem willing to waste time, as a Robotaxi was spotted moving on the terrain of the massive Texas complex for the first time by Joe Tegtmeyer. As seen in the footage below, the Cybercab is traveling along an active factory road with other vehicles around it. Reach forklifts even cross its path seemingly at random, forcing it to slow down.

But the most unsettling aspect of these images is that all the windows of the car are obscured, so we don’t know if there is a human operator inside, and therefore if the Robotaxi is moving completely autonomously. Naturally, where there’s an operator in the vehicle, there are control elements, and we can’t help but think that a version of the Robotaxi with a steering wheel and pedals could be Tesla’s highly anticipated affordable vehicle…

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