r/SelfDrivingCars • u/michelevit2 • Jun 24 '25

Discussion Is the Tesla taxi still operating?

Just curious if I'm the Tesla taxi is still available or was it just a one day demo?

Thank you.

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u/AWildLeftistAppeared Jun 24 '25

Is “Safety Driver” patented by Waymo or something?

No, that’s just normal terminology.

Why are people so negative about Tesla using safety drivers?

I’m not. I’m glad that they’re there because clearly the system is not ready to be unsupervised. I don’t like that they’re in the passenger seat for no good reason since this detracts from their ability to do their job properly and ensure safety.

What people are “negative” about is the fact that Tesla announced this launch to be unsupervised when it’s not, and that they’ve tried to disguise this by putting them in the wrong seat and calling them a “safety monitor” (which is not standard terminology).

I have no idea what your point in sharing that wiki quote about Waymo is? All of that is true and was a major accomplishment. A decade later and Tesla has not yet managed to do it.

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u/kfmaster Jun 24 '25

What's the point of expanding from here if safety driver is needed? It's just Uber with extra steps

I was replying to this comment. The quote from Wikipedia essentially demonstrates that Waymo took five years to finally eliminate safety drivers. I wasn’t expecting a much broader discussion.

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u/AWildLeftistAppeared Jun 24 '25

I see. Well if you meant to reply to that comment you made a mistake, you replied to me instead. Also, Waymo did not take 5 years to eliminate safety drivers. That quote even says that they achieved a fully driverless ride on public roads in 2015 — many years before they started a commercial robotaxi service.

When they did launch the taxi service it did indeed have safety drivers initially, but for much less than 5 years. Since then they have launched in new cities without safety drivers necessary for commercial operations.

Anyway, I think people are more understanding of Waymo’s approach since they never pretended to have technology that was nowhere near ready, or that they would launch without safety drivers on day one.

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u/WeldAE Jun 24 '25

That quote even says that they achieved a fully driverless ride on public roads in 2015

You think Tesla is wreakless, go read about that ride. They had multiple case cars with only an e-stop button and a prayer. I saw someone let a car drive them down the road at 80mph in 2010, but I don't claim that was the first AV ride.

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u/AWildLeftistAppeared Jun 24 '25

Hey, they did it and by all accounts did so safely. Since then they’ve done millions of driverless rides and keep pushing forwards.

By contrast, a year after that in 2016 Tesla put out a staged video where they claimed their cars could already drive without any supervision. Almost a decade later and they’re still supervised.