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Tesla Robotaxi — Tesla

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Reality is Hitting Tesla

Even the bulls are beginning to realise that the emperor is naked.

5 min readJun 26, 2025

In 2019, Musk promised that millions of driverless Tesla robotaxis would be on the road “next year”. For the past six years, Musk has been repeating this same promise like a drug-addled parrot in a painfully obvious attempt to pump up Tesla’s volatile yet stagnant stock price. Over the weekend, Tesla finally and tentatively rolled out its first-ever robotaxi service. But it’s a limp impression of what was promised and lays all of Tesla’s self-driving flaws bare.

There are more than a few elephants in the room when it comes to this “launch”.

Firstly, the launch is “invite only”, which isn’t surprising, as there are only a handful of vehicles included in this fleet. But this is far from the rapid roll-out Musk has been hinting at for years. However, because the only people invited seem to be Tesla employees, I’m not sure how this qualifies as a “launch”. Particularly because Tesla has been testing Model Y robotaxis with Tesla employees on the streets for months now.

These vehicles also aren’t the promised “Cybercab” and are instead standard Model Ys with the word “Robotaxi” written on the side in the same font as the Cybertruck logo. Why does this matter? The current FSD software and hardware have proven unable to…

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Will Lockett
Will Lockett

Written by Will Lockett

Independent journalist covering global politics, climate change and technology. Get articles early at www.planetearthandbeyond.co