Tesla's Robotaxi Miles Fall Despite Expanding Fleet

Tesla's Robotaxi network saw a decline in miles driven for paying customers in the second quarter, despite expanding to six cities. The company's rhetoric on autonomy has shifted from regulatory hurdles to proving safety.

According to a chart released by Tesla on Wednesday, the company's Robotaxi fleet of Model Y SUVs carrying paying passengers covered around 1.1 million miles in the first quarter. This fell to roughly 700,000 miles in the second quarter, a decline of about 36%. The Robotaxi network is still in its nascent stages, with operations in six cities across Texas and Florida.

Despite the decline in miles driven, Tesla has expanded its Robotaxi fleet, and the company claims to have had 'zero notable incidents' while driving over 380,000 miles without a safety operator onboard. However, the company has reported 22 crashes to the National Highway Safety Administration in the year since it started trialing its Robotaxi service.

Tesla's VP of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, boasted that the company's Robotaxis have had 'zero notable incidents' while driving 'more than 380,000 miles' without a safety operator onboard. However, the company has reported 22 crashes to the National Highway Safety Administration in the year since it started trialing its Robotaxi service.

The decline in miles driven also comes as Tesla made a striking admission on a conference call about its second-quarter results. CEO Elon Musk said the company needs to 'accumulate driving data that is specific to the Cybercab' before it can put a lot of Robotaxis on the road.

Musk said the company needs to 'accumulate miles with Cybercabs that are retrofitted with steering wheels and acceleration and braking pedals, that kind of thing, to calibrate to the Cybercab chassis.' This represents a break from claims the company has made for years about how its fleet of nearly 10 million customer cars has been silently collecting data in the background to train future robotaxis.

The company's rhetoric on autonomy has shifted from regulatory hurdles to proving safety. Tesla executives framed the slow progress as a matter of being cautious about safety. 'Our goals are very ambitious for Robotaxi, but we do need to be cautious about causing any accidents or causing any harm to anyone,' Musk said.

Musk also expressed concern about the potential consequences of a Robotaxi causing an accident. 'Although there are, I think, 30 to 40,000 automotive deaths per year in the United States alone, most of those do not generate any press, you don't really read about almost any of those. But if we injure even one person, it will be worldwide headline news, and regulators will immediately clamp down on our activities.'

The company's decision to build an autonomy stack that doesn't use radar or lidar sensors, like industry leader Waymo, is also a narrative shift. Historically, the company has claimed that the largest hurdle to full-scale Robotaxi deployment was regulatory in nature. Now, the company says proving safety is all that's holding Robotaxis back.

Despite the challenges, Tesla executives promised growth is coming. They noted that the number of unsupervised miles traveled has grown roughly 10% every week since Tesla started offering them at the end of last year. 'We'll continue to scale, I think, very, very rapidly,' Musk said.