Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday said the electric vehicle maker will roll out driverless ride-hailing services to the public in California and Texas next year, a claim likely to face significant regulatory and technical challenges.
“We think that we’ll be able to have driverless Teslas doing paid rides next year,” Musk said on Tesla’s quarterly earnings call. He said Tesla currently offers an app-based ride-hailing service to employees in the San Francisco Bay Area.
His statement doubled down and expanded on a pledge he made at Tesla’s robotaxi unveiling two weeks ago, where he said he expected to roll out “unsupervised” self-driving in certain Tesla vehicles in 2025. The lack of a business plan around the robotaxi at that event sent its stock plunging.
On Wednesday, however, Tesla won back some investor confidence by forecasting a jump in vehicle sales next year.
In California, in particular, the company will face an uphill climb in securing the needed permits to offer fully autonomous rides to paying customers.
Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Waymo, which offers paid rides in autonomous vehicles in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, as well as in Phoenix, Arizona, spent years logging millions of miles of testing before it received its first permit from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which regulates ride-hailing services.
