Tesla has been stating, since even before their semi-launch in Austin last month, that they would soon deploy their supervised robotaxi service in many other locations, including California. In this week’s Q2 earning’s call, Elon Musk predicted they would have robotaxis deployed to half the population of the United States.
New reports suggest Tesla may deploy such a service as soon as this weekend in the San Francisco Bay Area. But how?
The most common reaction to this plan has been that because many states, in particular California, require that companies get permits before deploying robotaxi services, that Tesla would need to get these permits. They take months to get, and Tesla has not yet applied for them. Tesla can’t run an autonomous vehicle taxi service. They can probably run a driver-assist based one.
These permits are to operate an actual Robotaxi service, namely one that drives without a human in the car responsible for the safety of the vehicle. Tesla stated it would launch such a service back in June, but was unable to make the deadline, so it put out a test service with a human “safety driver” employee in the vehicle. In Austin, that person is in the right-hand seat, and Tesla calls them a “Safety Monitor” when there, but calls them a Safety Driver if they switch into the left seat for any complex operations. “Safety Driver” has been the term of art in the industry for many years, and is a bit of a misnomer as the person does not actually drive the car, but–whatever you call them–the are the responsible driver for legal purposes, overseeing driving and able to intervene for safety. In the passenger seat, like a driving instructor for a teen with a learner’s permit, the safety driver can grab the wheel or trigger the brakes.
People debate if the seat matters, but the operation of Tesla’s “FSD” system with a human safety driver behind the wheel is of course very common. Indeed, there are people driving for Uber and Lyft in Teslas who turn on the FSD system while giving rides to customers. The FSD system controls most aspects of the car, and the driver supervises and takes legal driving responsibility. This has already been happening for some time, and apparently nothing stops Tesla from doing the same. A request for comment from the California DMV was sent to them a week ago, but they have been unable to respond, claiming more research is needed on the legality of this.
What Permits You Need
California regulations (whose drafting I had a minor involvement with) lay out 3 different permits for the operation of self-driving vehicles in the state for testing and taxi service. In addition, the California Public Utilities Commission has a series of permits required for offering taxi-style services to the public, both with human drivers and in self-driving vehicles.
Tesla has one self-driving permit, the one required to test such vehicles with a safety driver. It also has the permit from the CPUC to operate a pre-arranged taxi-style service with human drivers. It has not, as of this week according to the CPUC or DMV, applied for any of the other permits.
Tesla’s self-driving test permit is unusual. Over 50 companies have this permit, and they are required to report every year to the DMV how many vehicles they are testing and how many miles they have been tested. Tesla always reports zero miles, and has for several years. They do this because they declare Tesla Autopilot and Tesla FSD as “driver assist” systems which simply assist a responsible human driver with the driving task. A bit odd, considering the name “Full Self Driving” and Tesla is facing lawsuits, including one from the DMV, over the confusion with that name.
As long as Tesla can declare its vehicles to be operating only in a driver-assist mode, and not in an autonomous vehicle mode, they can argue the autonomous vehicle related permits do not apply to them. As such, nothing stops Tesla from operating a ride-hail service, like Uber, with human drivers and a driver assist system like FSD.
The Blurry Line
The open question is, when does a system step over the line? In 2016, the DMV reacted very differently when Uber ATG, the now sold-off self-driving unit of Uber, wanted to test their vehicles with safety drivers. They told the DMV they did not need a permit, as they would only test with a safety driver, and thus it would be driver assist. With particular irony, the Uber ATG Chief who declared this was Anthony Levandowski, who had participated in the drafting of the regulations that required the permits. (Later he would be involved in a variety of controversial battles, be ordered jailed, and be pardoned by Donald Trump on his last day of office.)
The DMV refused. They said that Uber’s vehicles were clearly to be classed as autonomous vehicles being tested, and needed the permits. They told Uber that they would pull the licence plates of the vehicles if they tested them without permits.
The DMV has not done this to Tesla. It has allowed Tesla to test Tesla FSD extensively on California roads while having the permit but declaring they are never using it. The DMV has declined to comment on why the two companies were treated differently.
Tesla’s FSD system is one thing, but their “robotaxi” version is something more. It still needs a human supervisor for safety reasons, as it is not yet good enough, but it does all the tasks of a taxi service, including remote summoning, pick-up and drop-off and receiving requests from riders. It is indistinguishable from an autonomous vehicle, other than in not yet being safe enough and complete enough to go into commercial operation unsupervised. It is the very archetype of an autonomous vehicle in testing.
Some would argue it goes even further when the supervising human is on the right hand side. Since driving school instructors supervise teens safely there, and probably a billion students have been trained in this manner, including myself, one can make the case that there’s no big safety difference between the two seats. But going in the right seat does require a system that can do all those other little things a taxi needs to do.
However, the reports suggest Tesla will put the responsible safety driver back behind the wheel in California, to avoid pushing things.
Supervised vs. Unsupervised
That Tesla can do this large deployment tells you what the huge difference between a supervised and unsupervised robotaxi is. You can put a self-driving system on the road with a supervising driver when it is pretty terrible, perhaps 1/1000th of the way to being ready for real deployment. This explains why Tesla could trivially expand their Austin service area, and shape it like a giant upside-down Tesla logo (or whatever shape it intended) while Waymo, which runs a real unsupervised robotaxi, had to take more care in doing an expansion in Austin around the same time. It explains why Tesla could deploy a supervised robotaxi over all of the Bay Area, indeed all of California or the USA, while the companies operating actual robotaxis are growing their services areas at a much slower pace. It has nothing to do with Tesla’s approach to driving most streets potentially being more general than the mapped approach other companies use. Tesla can do supervised robotaxi everywhere (as could Waymo and all the other companies) but they can do unsupervised only at the Tesla Factory and on a movie set. At least for now.
The main reason not to have a giant service area is the cost. The cost of the human supervisors. The cost of all the localization infrastructure. (It’s a lot.) You’re losing money so the reason to expand territory is because you think you can learn. You will learn, but in fact you’ll learn more than you can handle with just a modest territory, so there is minimal virtue in big expansion of a supervised service, and that’s why nobody has ever let one get very big.
Indeed, Tesla said in their earnings call that it has only operated the Austin service a small amount, in the area of 7,000 to 10,000 miles, which is just 20-25 miles, or a handful of rides, per day per car. It’s not clear what the goal of a large expansion is.
Tesla’s CPUC permit does not let them operate an Uber-like service where contractors drive their own cars. The supervising driver has to be a Tesla employee. As such, Tesla is, as employer, vicariously liable for all events. In fact, the permit Tesla applied for said they would only carry other Tesla employees but they may not be bound to that. (The CPUC did not respond to questions about this latter point.)
Tesla’s goal, like everybody else, is to make a vehicle safe enough to operate without supervision. Musk has said he wants it to be “much safer than a human driver” which means going at least a million miles between significant crashes. Tesla’s very far away from that at present, perhaps only Waymo and Baidu Apollo have reached it. Operating a supervised service helps in learning what problems are out there, but mostly it offers publicity.
The California DMV and CPUC may change their views on just what is allowed under their permits. To run an actual unsupervised taxi service, Tesla will need a DMV permit for vehicles to operate with no responsible driver in the car, and a DMV permit for such vehicles to take passengers. It will also need a CPUC permit to offer rides in such vehicles, first without charging money, and later to charge for rides. It hasn’t yet done any of that. The DMV might decide to treat Tesla like Uber ATG, and say, “No, that’s an autonomous vehicle, even with a safety driver, so you need all the permits.” Time will tell.
