Tesla (TSLA) finally launched its Robotaxi service in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, yesterday.
According to the last update on this matter by Tesla CEO Elon Musk last week, the launch of the Robotaxi Service in the Bay Area was delayed due to regulatory hurdles.
Musk also noted that the regulatory body in SF Bay, California has been “quite reasonable tbh [to be honest]”. And, he was right. The approval and launch of Robotaxi in the SF Bay Area came sooner than expected.
Tesla officially released the following geofenced Robotaxi service area map of the San Francisco Bay Area on X. However, this map does not look as oddly interesting as the latest one from Austin, Texas (but that’s not the only difference between Austin and the SF Bay Area).
As we can see in the map above, Tesla’s Robotaxi service in the SF Bay Area includes areas from South San Francisco, Berkeley, Hayward, Fremont, and a big part of San Jose, California.
The Bay Area location map is now unlocked for Early Access invitees in the Tesla Robotaxi phone app. The Early Access group can now avail Tesla’s Robotaxi service in both Austin and the SF Bay Area.
Tesla is expected to send new invitations to a limited group in California to ride a Tesla Robotaxi in the Bay Area. Tesla has been super cautious about safety with the Robotaxi program, so it will take some time for the service to be publicly available.
Difference between Austin and the SF Bay Area
In the review videos of the Tesla Robotaxi service in Austin, we saw a safety person sitting in the front passenger seat. However, the driver’s seat was always empty as the car drove itself and picked up and dropped off the riders.
However, in the early stage of the Robotaxi service in San Francisco, Tesla is legally bound to have a safety driver in the driver’s seat to take over anytime there is an imminent safety issue.
Currently, Tesla lacks the required permit to operate unsupervised Robotaxis. Therefore, the automaker has started the service in the Bay Area, but it’s currently a ‘Supervised Robotaxi‘ service, unlike in Austin, Texas.
Tesla began the process of acquiring permits for Robotaxi service in California earlier this year. The tech & AI automaker needs more permits from the government of California to start the Unsupervised Robotaxi service in the state.
As we see above, the area map also includes the Tesla Fremont factory area. Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system is well-versed in this area as official vehicles and cars owned by customers have accumulated millions of miles on these routes.
The automaker has a ton of AI self-driving data from its fleet in the SF Bay Area, which is one of the most populated areas with Tesla cars since the company’s beginnings.
Since the start of July, Tesla Robotaxi mapping vehicles have been spotted multiple times in this area. These multiple Tesla cars gathered even more data to train the FSD AI system in anticipation of the Robotaxi service launch in the area.
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