Tesla gets permit to test autonomous cars in Nevada as autonomous driving heats up there

Amazon’s self-driving Zoox launched service this week, and Google’s Waymo is testing there.

9/12/25 9:49AM

Tesla now has a permit to test its autonomous vehicles in Nevada, according a report yesterday from Tesla influencer Sawyer Merritt that was confirmed by TechCrunch.

Nevada, which has a lower barrier to entry for autonomous driving than states like California, is about to become a new hotbed for autonomous ride-hailing services.

Earlier this week, Amazon launched its self-driving Zoox service to the public for free at several locations along the Strip.

Google’s Waymo, which already has an operational autonomous vehicle service in five cities, announced at the beginning of the year that it would begin testing in Vegas in 2025.

Tesla currently operates a ride-hailing service with a regular human driver within four miles of tunnels below the city called the Vegas Loop, dug by the Elon Musk-founded Boring Company. When Sherwood News tried the service earlier this week, only two drivers were available to shepherd ride-seekers between several nearby resorts. After waiting about 15 minutes for our ride to arrive after being quoted three minutes, we wound up stopped at a red light underground behind the only other operational Tesla.

Took a Tesla ride through the Boring Company tunnels in Vegas. Only two cars were running. Got stuck in traffic behind the other car. pic.twitter.com/uSbqkPiYI0
— Rani Molla (@ranimolla) September 9, 2025

Tesla has been working on expanding the tunnels to more locations, including the airport, but had to suspend that activity yesterday after a worker “sustained a crushing injury.” A Vegas Loop employee told Sherwood it plans to open the route to the airport in January.

Tesla, which already sends cars autonomously through Boring Company tunnels at its factories, recently began testing supervised Full Self-Driving within the Vegas tunnels, though the driver we rode with had doubts the cars could employ Full Self-Driving tech properly in the tight tunnels underground.

Tesla currently operates only about 30 autonomous vehicles with a safety monitor in the passenger seat in Austin, Texas. It has autonomous testing permits now in Nevada and California (with a driver), and has applied for such permits in Arizona.

Tesla of course has big hopes and a rapid timeline for its autonomous deployment, which the company has said is central to its future.

“I think we’ll probably have autonomous ride-hailing in probably half, half of the population of the US by the end of the year,” Musk said during the company’s second-quarter earnings call in July. “That’s at least our goal, subject to regulatory approvals.”

OpenAI is shipping everything. Anthropic is perfecting one thing.

The two AI titans are in a race to grow revenues, but they have very different strategies for releasing products. And one approach appears to be winning out.

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73%

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Here’s another sign Anthropic’s enterprise tools are killing it: The AI firm now captures 73% of all spending among companies buying AI tools for the first time, Axios reports, citing data from Ramp, a fintech company that provides corporate cards and expense management software. That’s up from 50% in January, when it was tied with OpenAI.

As we’ve noted, Big Tech is pivoting from experimentation to revenue — and enterprise is where that shift is playing out.

Rani Molla10h

Microsoft considers suing Amazon and OpenAI over $50 billion deal

Microsoft may be about to take its biggest AI partner to court, the Financial Times reports.

Microsoft, a longtime backer of OpenAI, is weighing legal action over the latter’s $50 billion deal with Amazon tied to its new Frontier AI product, arguing it could violate a key clause in their exclusive cloud deal requiring OpenAI’s models to run through Azure. Amazon and OpenAI say they’ve found a workaround. Microsoft executives disagree.

“We know our contract,” a source told the FT. “We will sue them if they breach it. If Amazon and OpenAI want to take a bet on the creativity of their contractual lawyers, I would back us, not them.”

OpenAI, which is eyeing an IPO this year and under pressure to generate more revenue, is trying to loosen Microsoft’s grip as it scales, while Microsoft increasingly sees OpenAI as both a partner and competitor.

Microsoft weighs legal action over $50bn Amazon-OpenAI cloud deal

Rani Molla10h

Morgan Stanley says robotaxis could help Tesla sell more cars

Morgan Stanley analysts think Tesla’s robotaxi push could boost more than just a new business line — it could help sell more cars and software, too.

After visiting Giga Texas, analysts said they’re more optimistic about Tesla’s progress toward an unsupervised robotaxi rollout, with improvements in tricky pickup and drop-off scenarios where Tesla doesn’t have as much data from consumer usage. For now, the vast majority of its vehicles still have human supervisors in the front seat, but the analysts say the service is helping Tesla.

“Incremental unsupervised robotaxi miles driven improve the underlying autonomy model, which accelerates the path to personal unsupervised FSD [Full Self-Driving]. This, in turn supports higher FSD attach rates, improves auto demand, and cash flow generation.”

In other words, the more robotaxis drive, the better Tesla’s self-driving gets — and that could make its Full Self-Driving software more appealing and its cars easier to sell, in addition to improving its robotaxi service. Note that Tesla’s vehicle deliveries, which accounts for the lion’s share of the company’s revenue, have dropped two years in a row.

Morgan Stanley also sees a cost advantage. It estimates Tesla’s robotaxis could cost about $0.81 per mile to run today — cheaper than traditional ride-hailing and rival autonomous services — with costs falling further as purpose-built vehicles like the Cybercab scale.

Morgan Stanley maintained its equal-weight rating and $415 price target, about 4% above where the stock is currently trading.

Rani Molla

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Big Tech companies are now racing to see who can build the best AI coworker

After years of trying to have the best model, Big Tech is getting serious about the business side of AI.