Tesla has officially entered the autonomous vehicle (AV) testing phase in Austin, Texas, marking a key step toward the company’s planned launch of a self-driving ride-hailing service later this month.
After months of preparation, Tesla was added to the City of Austin’s official list of “Known AV Operators” in the testing category — confirming that the company has begun trial operations of its autonomous system on public roads. It joins other AV developers like Alphabet’s Waymo, which remains the only company listed under the “deployment” phase in the city.
Tesla’s move into AV testing represents a shift from CEO Elon Musk’s earlier vision of enabling unsupervised self-driving capabilities on millions of customer vehicles sold since 2016. Instead, Tesla now plans to run a smaller internal fleet equipped with geo-fenced, dedicated software, supplemented by teleoperation support to manage the vehicles remotely.
“Tesla only started testing the system without safety drivers at the end of May,” Musk recently admitted. In comparison, competitors such as Waymo spent a year in Austin — six months with safety drivers and another six months without — before fully launching its commercial robotaxi service earlier in 2024.
The recent listing signals Tesla’s formal entry into local AV testing protocols. The company had previously been absent from the city’s operator list, likely due to its classification of Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology as an advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS), which places legal responsibility on the human driver.
While sightings of Tesla vehicles bearing manufacturer plates and occupied driver seats have become common in Austin, the commercial rollout remains tentative. The company is targeting June 12 for the launch of its paid ride-hailing service, but this timeline may shift depending on regulatory approval and technical readiness.
Musk has reiterated Tesla’s intention to launch by the end of June, but without transitioning from the “testing” to “deployment” phase, the company will not yet be permitted to accept paying passengers.