Tesla’s ride-hailing service is now live in San Francisco
Elon Musk announced the automaker's ride-hailing service in the Bay Area, but it stops short of self-driving vehicles
Tim Goessman/Bloomberg via Getty
Tesla has launched its ride-hailing service in San Francisco, but California’s red tape will prevent those rides from being self-driving vehicles for now.
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In a post on the social platform X on Thursday, the company announced that it is officially rolling out its ride-hailing service in the Bay Area. Musk reposted the update on his own page. “You can now ride-hail a Tesla in the SF Bay Area, in addition to Austin,” the Tesla CEO wrote.
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Tesla’s post included a graphic of the area that the ride-hailing service will cover. “It covers a large area from north of the Golden Gate Bridge all the way south of San Jose,” tech reporter Sawyer Merritt wrote on X. “It would take about 1-2 hours (up to 75 miles) depending on traffic to ride from the top to the bottom of the geofence area.”
Many X users responded with excitement at the idea of hailing what they assumed to be Tesla's robotaxis.
“So excited to try this out!” wrote Jeffrey Weichsel (@jeffweichsel).
“Tesla could expand supervised ride hail across the country much faster than unsupervised. It would still be competitive with Uber prices and would start taking customers right away,” wrote Mike D. (@doctorrockk). “Uber is cooked.”
“The whole Bay Area,” wrote Joseph Holguin (@JosephHolguin). “That is impressive. The US rollout is going to be quick.”
However, despite the buzz, neither the company nor Musk mentioned whether the ride-hailing service will operate self-driving robotaxis. California has not permitted Tesla to offer robotaxi service, Reuters reported.
Elon Musk has promised to bring more robotaxis to the U.S. Last month, Tesla piloted its robotaxis in Austin with fully autonomous vehicles supervised by a human in the front passenger seat.
But in California, Tesla has toned down its rideshare plans in discussions with state regulators, Politico reported Wednesday. According to documents obtained by the publication, the term “Robotaxi” was never used in emails, letters, and meeting invites exchanged between the company and the DMV’s autonomous vehicle branch in the last year.