Report: Tesla's Robotaxis Are Behaving Badly In Texas

According to reports filed with regulators, first reported on by Forbes, Tesla’s first month of testing its so-called Robotaxis in Austin earlier this summer ended with three separate crashes—the Robotaxi's driving standards already caught the attention of NHTSA regulators in the first week.

One involved another vehicle rear-ending one of the Robotaxi Model Ys, another saw the Tesla's right rear and the front right of an SUV make contact while the Tesla was making a right turn. The third saw a Tesla with a safety driver on board hit a stationary object while travelling at 8 mph resulting in a minor injury and the Tesla towed away on the back of a flatbed.

According to the reporting, there's at least one unreported crash that was caught on video. The Tesla’s tire hit the front of a parked car in a parking lot. It's unclear why the crash wasn't reported, possibly because the damage was insignificant or because the incident happened on private property.

For context, Tesla revealed in its Q2 earnings call that by the end of July, it had logged just 7,000 miles of testing. Waymo, by contrast, has logged more than 96 million miles and reports 60 crashes in that span—two orders of magnitude fewer incidents per mile.

Adding context to the context in the name of fairness—Waymo has been offering robotaxi services for almost a decade now, and has been offering rides without safety drivers for the last five. July was Tesla's first month of Robotaxi operation.

Unlike competitors that rely on lidar, radar, and camera fusion, Tesla insists on using cameras alone. Critics say that decision leaves its system more vulnerable to blind spots and environmental factors. Regulators also don’t consider FSD to be a true self-driving system, as it still requires a human driver to remain alert and intervene when needed.

That hasn’t stopped Tesla CEO Elon Musk from making claims and promising a coast-to-coast autonomous driving network. In fact, California regulators have asked Tesla to "properly and accurately" describe its service and clear up any "public confusion" between its human-driven operations in California and the autonomous ride-hailing service it operates in Texas.

The California program operates under a glorified limousine permit and requires the safety driver to sit in the driver's seat. In Texas, the Safety Monitor rides shotgun when the ride is in town, but when the route takes the car onto the highway, the Safety Monitor has to hop over to the driver’s seat.

Tesla’s FSD struggles aren’t limited to its official testing program. A pair of Model Y owners recently attempted to drive from Los Angeles to Jacksonville, Florida, using FSD the entire way. Their trip came to a halt almost immediately when the car hit some kind of debris or object in the road, a mere 60 miles into the trip—the impact broke the Model Y's suspension.

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