Tesla aims to let owners enroll their own vehicles in its robotaxi fleet in the second quarter of 2027, according to Ashok Elluswamy, the company's vice president for autonomous driving. Elluswamy said the software running Cybercabs and the Model Y is the same, and that Tesla expects to deliver that software to customers as part of its V15 release. The remaining work, he said, is ensuring that customer Model Y vehicles can operate within Tesla's geofences and fleet management system so they can run fully autonomously. He described early 2027 as the point when Tesla could activate some of the first customer-owned vehicles in the robotaxi fleet.
The target carries particular weight because Tesla has a long record of missed deadlines in autonomous driving and robotaxis. In 2019, CEO Elon Musk said at the company's first AI Day that customer-owned cars could join a "Tesla Network" of robotaxis, earning passive income for their owners while driving autonomously to pick up fares, a model he compared to Uber and Airbnb. Musk also said a million Tesla robotaxis would be on the road by 2020. Neither promise has been fulfilled, and the long-promised unsupervised Full Self-Driving feature remains unachieved.
Tesla's current robotaxi operations remain small. The company has a few hundred Robotaxis in Texas and Florida, some of which still carry human safety monitors, along with several dozen fully driverless Cybercabs in Austin. Tesla also launched a new Robotaxi safety website stating that it has driven 3.3 million miles autonomously, up from the 380,000 unsupervised miles it reported in July.
Full Self-Driving adoption was a bright spot in Tesla's quarterly earnings. More than 75 percent of new buyers in North America chose Full Self-Driving (Supervised) this quarter, a jump of almost 20 percentage points from the prior quarter. Even so, Tesla's vehicle sales declined in the quarter as revenue flatlined and profits dipped.
Regulatory obstacles could prove significant even if Tesla opens its fleet to customer-owned cars. Unsupervised autonomous ride-hailing requires specific local and state permits, and insurance may be difficult to obtain. In most places, it is still illegal for individuals or outside companies to use their own self-driving cars as driverless taxis or passenger rides.
Hardware differences among Tesla vehicles add another constraint. Older Model 3 and Model Y vehicles without the latest full-self-driving hardware suites or AI compute infrastructure are limited by their capabilities. Cybercabs are built specifically for driverless passenger service, while consumer vehicles need additional software layers to guarantee safety without human intervention.
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