Elon Musk announced that Tesla will introduce “unsupervised full self-driving as a paid service” in Austin starting in June.
This statement builds on a similar claim he made earlier but with additional details. During Tesla’s Q4 2024 earnings call, Musk reiterated that the company plans to roll out unsupervised FSD in Austin as a paid offering. This aligns with his previous comments from Tesla’s last earnings call, where he mentioned launching unsupervised self-driving in California and Texas during Q2.
When asked about California, Musk predicted that unsupervised FSD would arrive there later this year, along with expansion to other regions across the U.S. However, his mention of Austin specifically—rather than Texas as a whole—and the emphasis on it being a paid service suggests a shift in Tesla’s strategy. Instead of rolling out unsupervised FSD to its customer fleet, as originally promised in 2016, Tesla may be planning a geofenced autonomous ride-hailing service with teleoperation, similar to what Waymo has already deployed in multiple cities.
Musk also reaffirmed that Tesla will not release unsupervised self-driving until it is significantly safer than human drivers. Tesla’s FSD lead, Ashok Elluswamy, previously stated that the benchmark for safety should be equivalent to human drivers, with the goal of achieving miles between necessary disengagements on par with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) estimate of 670,000 miles between collisions. Currently, Tesla’s FSD system is reportedly averaging fewer than 500 miles between necessary disengagements.
