Tesla tries to throw Waymo under the bus

During Tesla’s earnings call Wednesday, CEO Elon Musk offered a novel excuse for why the wider rollout of his Robotaxis is taking so long: They’re just too safe.

Because it’s “programmed for maximum safety,” he said, there are instances where the “car basically gets paranoid and gets stuck.”

One such incident, Musk said, involved a Waymo:

“There was one kind of amusing situation where a whole bunch of Robotaxis got stuck in the left turn lane in Austin because, I kid you not, a Waymo had crashed into a bus. And so they could not turn left because the Waymo had crashed into the bus. And so you had this like long line of like, I don't know, a dozen or more Tesla Robotaxis that were waiting for the bus to move. But the bus was never going to move because the Waymo has crashed into the bus. So that obviously drives people crazy if there's a whole bunch of Robotaxis blocking the whole road.”

This, of course, raises a few questions: How did the Waymo hit a bus? Why were a dozen or more Tesla Robotaxis – more than a quarter of the company's entire Austin fleet – concentrated in a single turning lane? And, crucially, did any of this actually happen?

Under a standing order from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), autonomous vehicle operators are required to report when their cars are involved in a crash.

According to those federal reports, Waymos have been involved in three crashes with buses in Austin, two in October and one in January 2026. But the details don't exactly match Musk's narrative. In each reported case, the Waymo was stopped when the crash occurred. In two of the incidents, the bus actually hit the Waymo. In the third, a passenger simply opened the Waymo’s door into a bus. None appeared to be something that should have blocked the left-turning lane. (No passengers were injured in the incidents.)

(For the record: The NHTSA files also show one instance of a Tesla Robotaxi crashing into an Austin bus in January. But unlike Waymo, Tesla heavily redacts the details of its crashes, citing “confidential business information.”) Waymo has an Austin fleet of 200, compared with 45 for Tesla.

According to a Waymo spokesperson, the incident Musk is likely referring to was an entirely different fender-bender — one in February that wasn’t reported to the NHTSA because it didn't result in any injuries or damage.

In that instance, a Waymo was stopped at a red light in a left-turn lane. A city bus, turning left from the opposite side of the intersection, clipped the front-left side of the Waymo and got itself stuck. According to the spokesperson, the Waymo simply reversed away from the bus without damaging either vehicle, clearing the intersection and solving the problem.

As for the parade of Teslas trapped behind them? The spokesperson noted that the Tesla vehicles in the turn lane appeared not to know what to do, so they stayed put.

Tesla didn’t respond to requests for comment.