Tesla employees are testing ride-hailing in San Francisco

Tesla has plans to launch its ride-hailing services for the public next year and it’s already testing its technologies internally for employees in the San Francisco office.

On October 10, Tesla unveiled its Cybercab robotaxi in public for the first time. The company also clear its ambitions in the autonomous ride-hailing industry.

It announced ride-hailing services launch in Texas and California next year. Although Cybercab is primarily designed for this task, it won’t enter production until 2026. It might even push to 2027 for fleet inclusion.

Therefore, the company will deploy its existing fleet of Model 3, Model Y, Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck for public ride-hailing in 2025.

These vehicles will be customized for public transport with unsupervised Full Self-driving (FSD) technologies and hardware.

Prior to public release, the company is conducting internal testing for this ride-hailing mechanism with Tesla employees.

During the Q3 2024 earning call, Tesla revealed this testing with employees in the Bay Area. These employees are using the in-development app to summon a robotaxi, which takes passengers anywhere in the Bay Area.

For now, Tesla has employed a safety drive to monitor the self-driving but it may not be required when the service goes public.

Regulators

To launch services, Tesla needs to get autonomous driving safety regulation approval, which may take a long time. Waymo, Google’s self-driving car is already operating in California but Tesla CEO, Elon Musk is not optimistic about the state’s regulations.

However, he believes that licenses in Texas may arrive sooner than expected and eventually in California.

The company plans to expand the ride-hailing services through other cities but Texas and California are first in the queue.