Tesla Readies a Taxi Service in San Francisco—but Not With Robotaxis

Tesla publicly has Its future is mired on her robotics. The company is now planning to launch public car service in the San Francisco Bay area. It is called “Robotaki”, but legally, this car will have to use cars with human driver.

The plan appears to be putting the electric car maker in mysterious legal waters in an American state with the most organized self -organized vehicle industry – and Tesla is already prone due to a misleading language about the technique of helping drivers.

On Friday, a spokesman for the California Public Utilities Committee, which organizes horseback services and taxis in the state, said that Tesla informed the agency on Thursday that it had planned to expand the taxi service to the employee only for friends, the family of employees and members of the “selection” of the public. Technically, Tesla is legally to launch this type of service in California: In March, she obtained a “Transport Charter Party” permit to take Tesla staff on pre -trips with a driver behind the wheel. But Tesla no It is allowed to operate a service based on an independent car there.

“Tesla is not allowed to test or transfer the audience (paid or unpaid) in [autonomous vehicle] “Tesla is allowed to transfer the audience (paid or unpaid) in an independent vehicle, which, of course, will have a driver.”

Business Insider first reported that Tesla told the employees that it was planning to launch the “Robotaxi” service in the Gulf region early on Friday.

In Wednesday’s profit call with investors, Vice President of Tesla told Ai Ashok Eluswamy that Tesla “works with the government to obtain approval” to launch it in the Gulf region. “Meanwhile, we will launch service with a person in the driver’s seat only to accelerate while waiting for organizational approval,” he said.

Legally, though, Tesla is not currently allowed to launch any kind of service with independent vehicles, which means that the “person in the driver’s seat” should be a driver. Tesla does not have a permit to experiment with independent vehicle technology even with a safety driver, Prosper says: “Therefore, an independent vehicle reserved in passenger service can be used.”

Tesla seems to talk about both sides of his mouth here. The company appears to insist on the organizers that it simply runs the California taxi service, with the shareholders’ suggestion that the new taxi service uses “robotics” and independent. The automobile company appears to have used this technology before. Located in the Administrative Court with California due to allegations that Tesla has misled consumers for years using a language such as “Automated Pilot” and “Full Self -Driving” to sell technology that cannot lead itself, but it must be supervised by a human driver at all times.

“Tesla could not get this in both directions,” says Philip Kobman, a professor at the University of Carnegie Mellon, who is studying the safety of independent vehicles. The auto company “Gives California more ammunition for the wrong advertising claim by insisting that it is a roboty when they tell the organizers that it is not.”