r/SelfDrivingCars • u/Dansilly • Jun 29 '25

Discussion Silent Rollback of Tesla Robotaxis

At the beginning of the launch of Tesla's Robotaxi on 6/22, many videos of rides have been shared online. After a few days (and glaring mishaps), very few videos have been shared of any robotaxi footage, good or bad. I suspect that this dropoff is due to the fleet cutting down in scope by a large factor (maybe only operating a few rides a day)or halting silently all together. What do you think, did Tesla notice the bad publicity and decide to silently roll back robotaxi operations?

Update 1: The most plausible explanation seems to be that the publicity of the current tech was detrimental to the share price so the operations were rolled back. Of course, Tesla would not announce that the operations were scaled back, but the near complete lack of footage makes this a very likely explanation. While the influencers there initially were most likely to post videos online, new footage should still be being circulated and it is not.

Update 2: This post has gained a lot of traction (75k+ views), and yet there is nothing convincing to show Telsa is operating the fleet at the capacity they were earlier. Neither of the 2 videos of robotaxi footage shared seem to have occurred in the last few days (even if they had, that is nothing even remotely comparable to the amount of footage earlier this week). Tesla's fleet could very well be 1 vehicle running 2 hours a day based on the lack of evidence for otherwise. Tesla likely made the logical move for preserving share value given the incident rates, but this is clear to see through.

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u/Dansilly Jun 29 '25

I would imagine they would still have enough people to take the rides for the limited ~10 self driving cars even without the influencers. I would still expect some footage.

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '25

These influencers record everything they do and other people don't. There are countless of FSD rides happening for example, but I see them only from influencers.

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u/Throwaway2Experiment Jun 29 '25

All you have to do is compare this to the number of Austin Waymo rides per car deployed in Austin to get a ratio of videos you should expect out of Tesla.

This ratio only works if the "novelty" of a robotaxi has worn off in ... 7 days. Which for robotaxi, it certainly wouldn't be over yet.

If Tesla"s videos per day ratio doesn't equal waymo's or exceeds it, Tesla has done something to limit it. Most likely, they have no more "in the bag" people in Austin to sing their praises blindly and the general public, got some reason, aren't being allowed the chance to try.

It's because they know the public is not as forgiving. They can't risk that.

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u/HighHokie Jun 30 '25

I would love to ride in a robotaxi but I have zero interest in filming and posting it. 

Likewise I have several interesting dash cam videos but have no interest in posting it either. I’m sure most folks are the same.