Tesla's Robotaxis Have Had 14 Crashes In Less Than a Year of Service

Tesla’s robotaxi pilot in Austin has logged more than a dozen crash incidents since launching last summer, according to reports the company has submitted to federal regulators.

Data provided to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows Tesla has reported 14 crashes involving its automated driving systems over roughly eight months of operation. Under a standing federal order, automakers are required to disclose certain collisions involving advanced driver assistance and autonomous technologies, including those that result in property damage or injury.

Tesla introduced its limited robotaxi service in Austin in June, initially deploying around a dozen vehicles equipped with human safety monitors in the front seat. The fleet has gradually expanded, though the company has not disclosed an exact vehicle count. The first reported crash occurred in July and was initially described as involving property damage only. In December, Tesla amended that filing to note the incident also resulted in minor injuries and a hospitalization. A separate July crash likewise led to minor injuries.

The company’s most recent submission, filed in January, details five additional incidents that occurred in December and January. One involved a stationary robotaxi and an Austin city bus. Two others occurred in parking lots, where robotaxis reportedly reversed into objects. As with earlier disclosures, publicly available details are limited. Tesla’s filings typically omit narrative descriptions of the events, in contrast to some competitors that provide more context. Most of the reported incidents cite property damage, with a smaller number referencing minor injuries.

In December, Tesla began testing fully driverless operation in a small subset of its Austin fleet, removing the in-car safety monitor. By January, the company said it was offering driverless rides in “a few” vehicles. It is not clear from the filings whether any of the reported crashes involved vehicles operating without a human monitor present.

Austin remains the only city where Tesla currently offers public robotaxi rides using its automated system. The company also operates a ride-hailing service in the San Francisco Bay Area through the same app interface, but those trips use human drivers and function more like a conventional rideshare platform.

While Tesla has not published detailed fleet figures for Austin, Elon Musk said in January that there were 500 rideshare vehicles operating between Austin and the Bay Area, though that total includes cars driven by humans.

Tesla’s rollout remains limited compared to Alphabet-owned Waymo. Waymo operates approximately 2,500 autonomous vehicles across multiple U.S. cities, including Phoenix, San Francisco, Austin, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Miami, and has been offering fully driverless public rides in the Phoenix area since 2020. Since June, Waymo has reported hundreds of incidents to federal regulators, including roughly 50 in Austin, where it operates about 200 vehicles through the Uber app.

This article was co-written using AI and was then heavily edited and optimized by our editorial team.

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