Tesla’s Supervised Robotaxi launched yesterday to much acclaim from the Tesla Cult. Tesla’s “launch” was limited to a handful of its most loyal Cult members who were given rides around a small area of Austin. Since nobody who was at the event has properly summarized the first day, we thought we would do it. 

The Dawn Project analysed day one of Tesla’s Supervised Robotaxi launch and reviewed material published by Dr Know It All, Zack, Herbert Ong, Dave Lee, Chuck Cook, Sawyer Merritt, Farzad, Dirty Tesla, Bearded Tesla, Joe Tegtmeyer, Rob Mauer, Teslaconomics, Kim Java and others.

Below are our findings.

Safety critical errors and driving errors on day one

  • In Rob Mauer’s ride, the Supervised Robotaxi failed to complete a left turn and panicked, whipping the steering wheel back and forth. It then drove on the wrong side of the road, failed to correct itself despite there being two open lanes for it to move into, and continued to drive down the wrong side of the road.
  • In a video posted by Edward Niedermeyer, the Supervised Robotaxi phantom braked twice for a stationary police car. If another car had been directly behind the Supervised Robotaxi this could have caused an accident.
  • When Dirty Tesla pressed the button for the Supervised Robotaxi to safely pull over and let him out, it ended the ride in the middle of the road, forcing cars to drive around it. The Supervised Robotaxi then got stuck and Dirty Tesla was forced to call rider support.
  • This also happened to Farzad, who was “dropped off” by his Supervised Robotaxi in the middle of an intersection. Farzad’s Supervised Robotaxi then became stuck and blocked the intersection.
  • During Herbert Ong’s journey, the Supervised Robotaxi activated the hazard lights for no apparent reason while driving.

Tesla has spent months preparing for this. Despite Elon Musk saying in 2019 that “If you need a geofence you do not have real self-driving”, the Supervised Robotaxis in Austin are geofenced. Despite Elon saying in 2019 that HD maps were a “crutch” that “should not be used”, Tesla has mapped the geofence. Elon even admits that the Supervised Robotaxis are avoiding difficult intersections in Austin. An image from Tesla’s control room showed Tesla has steering wheels to control the Supervised Robotaxis remotely.

Tesla is now doing all of the things that Elon Musk and the Tesla Cult constantly criticized actual Robotaxi companies for. Chief Propagandist of the Tesla Cult Omar Qazi previously called Motional and Hyundai’s Las Vegas Robotaxi service “the world’s shittiest Robotaxi service” for being limited to daytime operations, being geofenced, avoiding difficult routes and requiring a supervisor in the car. Now, Omar effusively praises Tesla for doing all the things he criticized Motional for.

Rather than fixing the critical safety defects in the millions of Full Self-Driving Teslas currently endangering America’s roads, Tesla’s engineering team has been busy mapping a small Austin geofence. We even conducted a live demonstration a week ago showing that FSD v13.2.9, the latest publicly available version of FSD, will run down a child mannequin crossing the road while illegally blowing past a stopped school bus with its red lights flashing and stop sign extended. We have not seen footage of a Supervised Robotaxi interacting with a school bus.

Despite Tesla limiting the Supervised Robotaxis to a small geofence, they also require the constant attention of a Tesla employee in the front passenger seat. Footage from multiple riders showed that the Tesla supervisors had their thumbs hovering over the door release button throughout the rides, which we suspect is a kill-switch. Dirty Tesla posted a 48 second long video showing the supervisor’s hand hovering over the door button the entire time. 

Tesla also admits that FSD on the Model Y may “suddenly swerve even when driving conditions appear normal and straight-forward”.

Elon Musk says that Tesla’s self-driving software is so far ahead of its competition that he can’t see second place with a telescope. He must be looking the wrong way!

Reuters reported that Tesla deployed 10 Supervised Robotaxis in Austin yesterday. 10 Supervised Robotaxis committed two safety critical errors in half a day of driving. That’s four safety critical errors in a full day.

Elon said that Tesla will have “a thousand” Robotaxis “within a few months”. At that rate, 1,000 Supervised Robotaxis would commit 400 critical errors in a full day of driving.

Elon also said that Tesla would have hundreds of thousands of Supervised Robotaxis by the end of 2026. If Tesla deployed 200,000 Supervised Robotaxis they would make 80,000 critical driving errors in a full day of driving. Over the course of a year, they would make 29.2 million critical driving errors.

A post from Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s VP of AI, showed that Tesla’s Supervised Robotaxis had driven about 500 miles. In these 500 miles, the Supervised Robotaxis made two known safety critical errors when they drove on the wrong side of the road and phantom braked. The Supervised Robotaxi only managed approximately 250 miles between safety critical errors.

The latest statistics from the FSD community tracker reveal that Tesla Full Self-Driving version 13.2.9 travels 327 miles between critical disengagements. Yesterday the chief propagandist of the Tesla Cult, Omar Qazi, confirmed that a new version of FSD, v13.3 was running on the Supervised Robotaxis. v13.3 is therefore worse than its predecessor v13.2.9.

A decade ago, between September 2014 and November 2015, Waymo travelled 423,000 miles and had 341 disengagements. That’s 1,240 miles per disengagement. Now Waymo travels 17,060 miles between critical disengagements, conducts 250,000 paid rides a week and has served 10 million total rides – all without a single serious accident. 50 people have been killed in accidents involving Tesla’s self-driving software and Tesla FSD still hasn’t driven a single mile unsupervised.

Tesla spent months planning this. It limited the Supervised Robotaxi to a small area. It curated a list of loyal Cultists to invite. Despite all of these precautions, Tesla Full Self-Driving is so defective that the Supervised Robotaxi drove on the wrong side of the road,  phantom braked, let its passengers out in the middle of the street while blocking an intersection and randomly flashed the hazards.

What Tesla put out yesterday is not a robotaxi. It is a robotaxi infant that requires constant supervision to stop it from injuring itself or others. Tesla is laughably far behind Waymo and other real robotaxi companies.