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

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.

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.”