Elon Musk announced this month that he plans to introduce a Tesla robotaxi this summer. However, regulators in Arizona, California, and Nevada stated that Tesla has not yet applied for the necessary permits.
Despite Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s announcement last week that a new robotaxi product will be revealed in August, two California agencies that regulate robotaxis reported they haven’t heard from Tesla about its plans.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) informed NBC News in separate statements that Tesla has not applied for the necessary permits to operate a driverless car service in the state.
Similarly, regulators in Arizona and Nevada also stated that Tesla has not communicated with them regarding its robotaxi plans.
The absence of permits or any attempts to acquire them raises doubts about how quickly Tesla could launch a robotaxi service.
“Tesla is a long way from getting that approval,” said Brad Templeton, a consultant in the autonomous vehicle industry.
Tesla representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
California, a pivotal state for the rollout of robotaxis, requires aspiring services to obtain at least two permits. The DMV handles permits for deploying autonomous equipment on the road, and currently, Tesla holds the lowest-level permit, which allows testing autonomous vehicles with human drivers present. Only three companies have the highest-level permit for deploying autonomous vehicles without human drivers.
“Tesla has not applied for a deployment permit with the DMV,” the department stated, adding that if Tesla were to deploy autonomous robotaxis, “the DMV will ensure that Tesla operates under the appropriate autonomous vehicle permits.”
The CPUC oversees permits to operate robotaxis as businesses, like Waymo’s services in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The commission confirmed that Tesla has no CPUC permit and has not applied for one.
“If Tesla wanted to provide a robotaxi service, they’d need to follow the same rules as other companies, such as obtaining DMV approval for driverless testing/deployment before seeking a CPUC permit. The CPUC has not been contacted for such a permit,” the commission stated.
Waymo, a Google spinoff, took eight months to obtain its initial CPUC permit to operate a fare-charging robotaxi business, applying in December 2022 and receiving approval in August. Templeton noted that Tesla’s approval timeline could be shorter or longer than eight months.
“It’s possible that they think Tesla is premature and might never approve it,” said Templeton, who is a former member of Google’s self-driving car team, now Waymo, though he left a decade ago and has no current ties to the company.
Tesla has approached self-driving technology differently from Waymo, relying less on expensive hardware sensors like LiDAR and deploying driver assistance systems in stages nationwide. In contrast, Waymo and General Motors subsidiary Cruise have focused on mastering specific geographic areas, such as parts of the Phoenix and San Francisco metro areas.
Currently, Tesla’s publicly released technology does not support fully autonomous driving without human supervision. Its “full self-driving” product still requires a human driver to be present and ready to take over at any time.
Each state has its own approach to regulating robotaxis, and Tesla could potentially launch a service outside of California, although this would mean excluding a significant market. According to the California New Car Dealers Association, Tesla was the second-largest seller of new cars and light trucks in the state last year, with 230,589 new registrations, just behind Toyota.
Musk hinted at his plans in a brief post on X late Friday afternoon, stating, “Tesla Robotaxi unveil on 8/8.”
While he provided no further details, the post lifted the spirits of Tesla fans on social media who had seen the company face negative coverage in the business media and on Wall Street. Three days earlier, Tesla shares had fallen after the company reported a drop in deliveries, but on Monday, the next trading day after Musk’s post, Tesla’s share price increased by 4.9%, according to Reuters.
Speculation has been rife on Tesla message boards about what Musk’s August announcement might entail. It’s unclear whether he plans to unveil a vehicle, a service, or something else.
Musk has discussed a robotaxi service for years. In 2019, he mentioned plans to launch a robotaxi fleet using Tesla vehicles returned after leases expired. This strategy would have shifted the startup costs of building a fleet, particularly depreciation costs, to leaseholders, drivers, and analysts noted at the time.
Musk has also talked about a robotaxi service with decentralized ownership, where Tesla owners could rent out their cars for fares.
Tesla would likely need authorization from various states or localities to operate a nationwide robotaxi fleet.
In Arizona, Waymo and Cruise have permits from the state Transportation Department to operate as “transportation network companies” (TNCs), and a similar permitting process would apply to other companies offering comparable services.
The Arizona DOT “has not received any TNC paperwork from Tesla,” spokesperson Bill Lamoreaux said in an email. “That said, it is our understanding that Tesla is neither operating autonomous vehicles nor a transportation network company in Arizona at this time.”
The department has also not received paperwork from Tesla for a separate process to self-certify autonomous vehicles, he added.
Cruise, which obtained California permits for a robotaxi service, halted operations nationwide last year after one of its cars in San Francisco failed to detect a pedestrian pinned underneath it and dragged her for 20 feet. California officials also accused Cruise of failing to properly disclose details of the incident and revoked Cruise’s permits. This week, Cruise announced it was resuming testing with human drivers.
Amazon subsidiary Zoox has said it has authorization from Nevada to operate a robotaxi service, though it has not yet launched. Nevada has a “self-certification” process for robotaxi operations, and the Nevada DMV issues a “certificate of compliance” to eligible entities.
The Nevada DMV has not received paperwork from Tesla to begin the certification process, said Eli Rohl, a department spokesperson, but he noted that the process could be swift.
“If Tesla was interested in getting certified or permitted in Nevada, they could likely do so in short order,” he said in an email.
Tesla already has a tense relationship with California regulators. In 2022, the California DMV accused Tesla of deceptive practices in the marketing of its driver assistance systems, including using the name “Full Self-Driving.” An administrative hearing on that matter is scheduled for September.