Khaberni - While Tesla CEO Elon Musk bets on autonomous driving as a pillar for the future of his company, regulatory data reveals that the "Robotaxi" service in Austin has recorded 14 accidents during its first eight months of operation, shedding light on the challenges facing the company's technical ambition in the autonomous vehicle’s race.
Bloomberg reported, citing reports filed by Tesla to U.S. regulators, that its autonomous taxis were involved in more than 12 accidents since the limited service began in Austin in June.
According to the data submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the number of accidents reached 14 incidents in about eight months. A federal order requires car manufacturers to report accidents involving autonomous driving systems under certain circumstances.
Tesla launched its service in Austin with a limited fleet of about 12 vehicles equipped with human safety monitors inside the vehicles, before gradually increasing the number. The first accident occurred in July, and the company reported at the time that damages were limited to property. However, it submitted an additional report about the same incident in December, indicating minor injuries that required hospitalization.
Another accident in July resulted in minor injuries. In January, the latest company report showed five new accidents occurring in December and January, including a collision between a parked Robotaxi and a bus belonging to the city of Austin, in addition to two incidents where vehicles collided with objects while reversing in parking lots.
After tests conducted in December, Tesla began offering rides without any safety monitors inside some of their vehicles in Austin in January. It was not immediately clear whether the reported accidents included vehicles operating without human supervision. The data indicates that the information available about the accidents is limited, as Tesla, unlike some of its competitors, withholds detailed narrative descriptions of the incidents, mostly mentioning only material damages.
The competition is intense, and Austin remains the only city where Tesla currently offers its Robotaxi service. Last year, the company launched a service through the same app in the San Francisco Bay Area, though those trips rely on human drivers and resemble Uber's business model. This comes at a time when Musk is increasingly relying on autonomous driving technologies and robots to make up for the slowdown in its core electric vehicle business.
Tesla has not disclosed the current size of its fleet in Austin, but Musk stated in January that the number of passenger vehicles between Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area was around 500 vehicles. In contrast, Waymo, owned by Alphabet, operates about 2,500 vehicles in several cities including Phoenix, San Francisco, Austin, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Miami, as well as conducting tests in other locations, according to the agency.
Waymo recorded hundreds of accidents since last June, including about 50 accidents in Austin where it operates approximately 200 vehicles through the Uber app. Tesla had announced plans to expand to about seven additional cities by mid-year, but it has previously failed to meet similar expansion promises set for the end of last year. While Waymo has been offering driverless rides to the general public in the Phoenix area since 2020, Tesla's operations in autonomous driving are relatively behind compared to its main competitor.
