We asked 3 autonomous driving experts to comment on Tesla's robotaxi launch and break down videos of some of its errors

Business Insider

2 days ago

Tesla's robotaxis are finally on the road — and on camera.
The lucky few who got to ride Tesla robotaxis after last month's launch posted videos of their rides online, and it didn't take long for viewers to identify possible errors by the driverless vehicles. Business Insider asked autonomous driving experts to review those videos and share their thoughts on what they saw, and what might need to be changed before Tesla scales up its long-awaited product.
Tesla's robotaxis launched on Sunday, June 22, in a limited area in Austin. Its "early access rides" were only available to a group of Tesla influencers and investors, who have been live-streaming and posting about their rides. Most of the rides appear to have gone smoothly, but there have been some hiccups.
According to the posted videos, the list of robotaxi issues includes speeding more than 10 miles above the limit, driving into the wrong lane, incidents of random braking, issues with the pullover button, and at least two interventions from the safety monitor due to parking issues.
The three autonomous driving experts told Business Insider about how they think the launch went, and what may have prompted robotaxi issues caught on camera.
BI called the influencers and investors to ask about their rides, but did not hear back. Tesla did not respond to a detailed request for comment from Business Insider.
The vision-only robotaxi design
Robotaxi uses an advanced version of Tesla's Full Self‑Driving (FSD) software as its central system, complete with eight cameras installed around the vehicle to capture 360° visual data. The vehicles do not use any radar or lidar, unlike competitor Waymo, whose cars rely on multiple ways to sense the environment.
Lidar uses laser light pulses to scan the environment, while radar detects objects with radio waves.
Raj Rajkumar, professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, told BI that while issues with pullover and even driving into the wrong lane could likely be fixed through more training data, incidents of what he described as "phantom braking" may have exposed a flaw in the robotaxi design.
In one video he saw, YouTuber Kim Java was on a robotaxi ride when, according to the video, it braked with nothing obstructing it, causing her belongings to fall to the floor.
Java, a YouTuber specializing in tech and clean energy with more than 250 thousand subscribers, can be seen in the video saying, "That's something that people have talked about being one of the limitations of Full Self-Driving with robotaxi," immediately after the braking incident.
"To process camera data, one has to use AI and machine learning," Rajkumar said. "But hallucinations are an integral part of how AI operates, and once you hallucinate, phantom braking ends up happening, so a camera-only solution will not be sufficient for a very long time."
"Imagine being on the freeway at 65 mph and the car suddenly brakes for a phantom object, and there is an 18-wheeler semi truck behind you, and they cannot stop," Rajkumar added. "It could be extremely dangerous, depending on what's happening around you."
Steven Shladover, lead researcher at the Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology program at the University of California, Berkeley, told BI he is concerned that Tesla's camera-only approach without lidar or radar will eventually lead to passenger injuries without intervention.
Shladover reviewed a range of different Tesla robotaxi mishaps, including an apparent incident of speeding and veering into the wrong lane, in addition to the sudden braking.
"Automated driving needs a combination of sensor data from cameras, radars, and lidars, as well as precise localization relative to a high-accuracy digital map of the roadway environment and other data such as the local rules of the road and speed limits," said Shladover.
"Phantom braking" is a known phenomenon in some Tesla software systems.
Tesla is facing a class-action lawsuit over alleged phantom braking in its Autopilot system, which is "an advanced driver assistance system" that is different from the supervised version of Full Self-Driving.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also launched an investigation into Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in 2022 after more than 750 drivers complained to the agency that their Teslas suddenly slammed on the brakes at high speeds while on Autopilot. The investigation and evaluation are still ongoing.
In the same year, a Tesla driver who told police they were using the supervised Full Self-Driving was caught in an eight-car pileup due to sudden and unexpected braking. CNN first reported this incident in December 2022, and Tesla did not respond to their requests for comments.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk addressed phantom braking complaints in 2020 on what was then Twitter, but he has not commented further since then.
"Is the issue of phantom braking fixed in this release?" user EV-HQ asked in October 2020. "Has been a number of people talking about this recently."
"It should be," Musk replied, following up with, "Meant to say that it should be fixed in the latest wide release. Won't need to wait for FSD."
Tesla's robotaxis need more training
Autonomous driving experts are saying "not so fast" when it comes to replacing human drivers entirely, especially for Tesla's robotaxis.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said prior to the launch that a human safety monitor would accompany each robotaxi in the passenger seat out of an abundance of caution.
From what can be seen in the videos, the human monitor can halt the vehicle by pressing an "In Lane Stop" button on the touchscreen. This feature can be seen used in a video where a safety monitor stopped a robotaxi from colliding with a reversing UPS truck as the vehicle attempted to park itself.
The video in question is posted by Dave Lee, an early Tesla investor and a YouTuber with more than 230,000 subscribers.
"There are real robotaxis on American roads, but none is a Tesla," Bryant Walker Smith, a professor in engineering and law at the University of South Carolina, told BI. "Tesla is still relying on safety drivers for its Austin demo — and rightly so, because its technology is immature."
"There is a huge difference between launching without safety drivers and testing or demoing with them, akin to climbing up a giant cliff with or without a harness and rope," Smith added.
It is common for autonomous vehicles to launch with a safety driver first. Waymo's early vehicles, including those in its public pilot programs, initially included a safety driver in the driver's seat. The Wayve self-driving car, which recently launched in London, also comes with a safety driver.
It is also common for robotaxis to experience incidents, even years after initial launch.
In 2024, Waymo recalled its vehicles twice, once for a fleet of 670 cars after an unoccupied robotaxi hit a telephone pole in Phoenix. Cruise's robotaxis repeatedly caused jams on city roads after launching in San Francisco in 2022. In 2023, a Cruise vehicle dragged a pedestrian initially hit by a human driver for an additional 20 feet instead of stopping, which led to the company's robotaxi business folding.
Rajkumar said that Tesla robotaxi is "extremely geofenced" to a region of Austin that, based on screenshots, seems to span 5.5 to 6 miles east to west and 3.5 to 4 miles north to south.
Waymo, too, has limits on where it can go, and it is unable to drive freeways in most of the cities it operates in.
Rajkumar called the launch "a good start," but said there is still a way to go before the Tesla robotaxi could handle unfamiliar situations on its own, completely free of human intervention.
"There is a very long list of things that happen in real life that we do not anticipate when we drive," Rajkumar said. "But we are very intelligent creatures, we know how the world operates and we can decide to take action on it on the fly, even if it's something that we have never ever seen before."