The actual scale of Tesla\u2019s Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, is significantly smaller than the public statements made by the company and its CEO Elon Musk, Electrek reports. The outlet contacted Ethan McKenna, a 19-year-old engineering student at Texas A&M University, who independently analyzed the Robotaxi app and found that no more than a handful of autonomous vehicles \u2014 roughly one to five \u2014 are operating in the city at any given time.<\/p>\n
According to McKenna, he was able to reverse-engineer the Tesla Robotaxi app\u2019s API and collect data on service availability. Based on this information, he created an online tracker that monitors the network\u2019s operation. In total, 32 Tesla Model Y crossovers were identified in the system as formally belonging to the Robotaxi fleet in Austin. However, this does not mean that all of them are actually on the road.<\/p>\n
Tracker data shows that most of the time the service is either unavailable or operating with a minimal number of vehicles. Over the past week, Robotaxi was unavailable about 60% of the time. McKenna explains that every five minutes the system checks wait times at 11 different points within the service area. If the app displays \u201chigh demand\u201d or an error, the service is considered unavailable. In many cases, Robotaxi does not operate at any location at all, even during its officially stated operating hours.<\/p>\n
In the researcher\u2019s view, \u201chigh demand\u201d messages are misleading to users. In reality, the issue is not excessive demand but a shortage \u2014 or complete absence \u2014 of vehicles on the road. This is further supported by the fact that users often receive the same vehicles for their rides, which is unusual for services with a sizable fleet.<\/p>\n
The situation sharply contrasts with Elon Musk\u2019s claims. After launching the pilot project in June, Tesla announced that the service would open \u201cto everyone\u201d in September, and in November Musk said the fleet had doubled. He also predicted that by the end of the year around 500 robotaxis would be operating in Austin and that the service would cover half of the U.S. population. Separately, Musk promised to eliminate safety drivers inside the vehicles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":150884,"menu_order":0,"template":"","newscat":[9],"newstag":[],"issues":[],"class_list":["post-150883","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","newscat-novosti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/150883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"newscat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newscat?post=150883"},{"taxonomy":"newstag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newstag?post=150883"},{"taxonomy":"issues","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issues?post=150883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}