--- title: "Tesla’s Robotaxis Are a Complete Disaster" description: "Behind the scenes, the reality is that Tesla's much-hyped Robotaxi program sounds like an absolute hot mess." date: "2026-06-13" modified: "2026-06-13" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/teslas-robotaxis-disaster" categories: - "Advanced Transport" - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "Self-Driving Vehicles" - "Tesla" - "The Industrialists" --- # Tesla’s Robotaxis Are a Complete Disaster ![Stylized photo illustration featuring a Tesla Robotaxi.]() *Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Jay Janner / Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images; Shutterstock* Elon Musk, in trademark fashion, has made grand promises about Tesla's Robotaxi efforts. Before he launched the service last summer, he [proclaimed]() that over 1,000 of the self-driving cabs would be roaming the city streets "within a few months." He also said that one million self-driving Teslas using the Robotaxi software would be roaming the country by the end of 2026. In an earnings call after the launch, Musk upped the ante even further. "We'll probably have autonomous ride-hailing in about half the population of the US by the end of the year," he predicted. Needless to say, Musk's service is drastically short of living up to any of these ambitions. There are just 59 Robotaxis on the road, [*Bloomberg* reports](), with at least some of them [still requiring physical human supervision](). Its efforts to expand past its home base in Austin, Texas are floundering, with the company forced to admit to California state regulators that its self-driving cabs don't actually drive themselves, according to the reporting. This incremental progress would be permissible at a smaller company. But Musk has persistently wooed investors with his sci-fi vision of the company's future, keeping its stock buoyant and driving its market cap well past the $1 trillion mark. (Even this is a let down: when he announced a Robotaxi pivot in 2024, Musk [projected]() it would help push Tesla's valuation to $30 trillion. That is not a typo.) The monstrous hype has put Tesla in a paradoxical position: the business side of things looks more precarious than ever, with cratering profits and a plunging public image, but its market valuation has soared. Musk has defended the slow progress by stressing the company is "paranoid about safety." There's an element of truth to this, given the tiny fleet size and that many of the Robotaxi rides remain supervised by human workers. But on the other hand, Musk is clearly willing to casually overstate the capabilities of his tech to keep stringing along Wall Street. "Tesla, which by all indications is a confident company run by a supremely confident person, is clearly not confident in the reliability of their technologies," Bryant Walker Smith, an autonomous vehicles researcher and associate professor of law at the University of South Carolina, told *Bloomberg*. "The scale of this is very small." The picture on the ground painted by *Bloomberg* echoes the [complaints raised by customers]() ever since the Robotaxi service was opened up to the public, after it was initially limited to a cadre of uncritical Tesla influencers. Wait times frequently stretch up to 30 minutes, even in Austin, where most of the Robotaxis are deployed, with the app often barring users from booking rides during periods of "high service demand." And the cars behave erratically, picking up and dropping off customers at bizarre and inconvenient locations, such as in an alley. Around one in three of the rides have a human monitor sitting in the car, whose presence seems mostly perfunctory; one rider complained that his Robotaxi dropped him a quarter mile from his actual destination, despite a monitor being in the car. All the while, there's been a frustrating element of smoke and mirrors surrounding the Robotaxi efforts. Until now, Tesla's didn't disclose official figures on the size of its fleet and has [belatedly reported Robotaxi crashes to regulators](), heavily censoring the circumstances of the accidents. In January, when Musk announced that the Robotaxis would finally start giving rides in Austin with a human supervisor in the car, it soon emerged that this was yet more sleight-of-hand: the rides [were still being supervised by having another human-driven]() car tailing the Teslas. **More on Tesla:** [*Tesla Insiders Admit Self-Driving Is a Complete Disaster*]() ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()