Musk says Tesla’s robotaxi will open to the public next month

Over the weekend, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Tesla’s robotaxi service “will be open access next month.” He made the statement in the way he makes lots of other important business statements: in a reply to a follower on X.

But like other reply announcements he’s made on the site, there’s reason to be wary.

For example, in July Musk told a follower inquiring about the expansion of the company’s self-driving service that it would grow to the Bay Area in a month or two. Tesla did roll out a service in the Bay Area, but it has a driver using supervised full self-driving and doesn’t have Robotaxi branding — a bit closer to an Uber than a self-driving car.

From Musk’s latest comments, it’s unclear if he’s referring to the Robotaxi app doing Uber-like ride-hailing with Teslas in the Bay Area or the robotaxi self-driving service in Austin, which has a person monitoring in the passenger seat but seems a bit more like a car driving itself.

If it’s the former, California residents already have that service with Uber and Lyft (as well as true driverless ride-hailing with Google’s Waymo). If it’s the latter, at last count Tesla only had 10 to 20 vehicles operating in Austin, so if the program is indeed opened to the broader public, the company will also have to roll out many more robotaxis (and their passenger seat monitors) in order for the service’s broader availability to matter in practice, given likely high demand.

The stock is up more than 4% today.