Here’s the lowdown on Tesla’s looming robotaxi launch, including where invites landed

Tesla watchers have been waiting for years for the launch of the company’s long-delayed autonomous robotaxi service. Finally the launch appears imminent, set for Sunday, but in a much more subdued manner than had been promised.

That hasn’t dimmed expectations among Tesla’s biggest bulls, including Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, who wrote this morning:

“...we view this autonomous chapter as one of the most important for Musk and Tesla in its history as a company... as we believe the AI future at Tesla is worth $1 trillion to the valuation alone over the next few years.”

Overnight, a select few were welcomed to use the invite-only robotaxi service gearing up to launch in Austin on June 22. Here’s what we know about the robotaxi launch so far:

Invites are for Tesla friends only. The company unsurprisingly invited its biggest fans, including X users Sawyer Merritt, Whole Mars Catalog, and Kim Java.

Many were also people who paid for Tesla’s original full self-driving beta program back in 2020.

You will not be alone with the machine. A “Tesla Safety Monitor” will be “sitting in the front right passenger seat.” The service will also have teleoperators watching to intervene. “We do have remote support, but it’s not going to be required for safe operation,” CEO Elon Musk said during the latest Tesla earnings call. “Every now and then if a car gets stuck or something, someone will like, unlock it.”

It will have have 10 to 20 cars. The robotaxi service in Austin will launch with 10 to 20 cars, as Musk had said on the company’s latest earnings call. Wedbush’s Ives says the launch will have roughly 20 vehicles, while the Financial Times has pegged that number closer to 10.

Say hello again to the Model Y. The robotaxi vehicles will by Model Ys and not the Cybercabs, which are still scheduled for production next year, according to Tesla.

The service runs from 6 a.m. to midnight every day. Robotaxis too, it seems, need to sleep. Like human drivers, the service also might avoid driving during bad weather.

Like Google’s Waymo, Tesla’s robotaxis will be geofenced. Musk has said the service will avoid difficult areas, though the exact parameters are unknown, other than that it won’t include airports. They’re “not going to take intersections unless we are highly confident [they’re] going to do well with that intersection, or it’ll just take a route around that intersection,” Musk said in a CNBC interview last month.

It’s still possible it might not happen. Musk himself earlier this month said the date was tentative and “could shift.” Meanwhile, a group of Democratic lawmakers in Texas have asked that Tesla delay its launch until September, when a new law goes into effect that will require autonomous vehicle companies to apply for authorization to operate. Currently, autonomous ride-hailing services don’t need any special permits to drive in Texas. It’s not clear if Tesla will respond.

The service is supposed to scale very quickly, but Musk always overpromises. Musk said on the last earnings call that “there will be millions of Teslas operating autonomously in the second half of next year.” Of course, we’re still not on Mars yet, either.