• Tesla CEO Elon Musk has indicated the company is on track to begin its driverless ride-hailing service in Austin, Texas in June.
• It is hiring plenty of remote operators who will monitor the self-driving taxis to ensure safety.
• Musk said the initial pilot will involve around 10 EVs and "probably" scale up to a 1,000 robotaxis in a few months.

After promising self-driving cars nearly every year for the past decade, Tesla is now preparing to launch its much-hyped fleet of driverless ride-hailing Model Ys in Austin, Texas, by the end of June. But will they be truly autonomous, or will remote human operators quietly keep things on track from afar?

The latter appears to be a more likely outcome, at least during the early stages of the rollout.

Adam Jonas, an equity analyst at investment bank and research firm Morgan Stanley, said in a note that he visited Tesla’s Palo Alto office recently and learned that the company would be relying on “plenty of tele ops” to ensure the service is safe for public use.

Sure enough, his claim lines up with several teleoperation job postings on Tesla’s careers site.

One job Tesla has posted is titled “C++ Software Engineer, Teleoperation, Optimus & Robotaxi.” Another one is titled, “Robotics Engineer, Teleoperation, Optimus.” The former job description reads: “Our cars and robots operate autonomously in challenging environments. As we iterate on the AI that powers them, we need the ability to access and control them remotely.”

Above all, safety still remains a key concern for these driverless EVs. Tesla has yet to publish safety data for its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software and federal regulators continue to investigate the incidents involving Autopilot and FSD, the advanced driver assistance systems, which have been linked to hundreds of crashes—some of which have been fatal.

But Tesla is confident and is pressing ahead with its robotaxi plans after years of delays. It will begin with a small pilot fleet of around 10 cars in Austin, available only to an “invite-only” group of users. In an interview with CNBC last week, CEO Elon Musk said that the number of robotaxis “will probably be at 1,000 within a few months.”

Musk then doubled down on Tesla’s camera- and AI-based strategy to train its robotic computer that controls the vehicle, dismissing the advanced sensors such as lidar and radar that Waymo has been using. “What we found is that when you have multiple sensors, they tend to get confused. So do you believe the camera or do you believe lidar?” Musk said.

Ironically, Tesla’s latest approach now resembles Waymo’s in at least one way. It will have humans in the loop. According to its job postings, Tesla appears to have built its own virtual reality rig for teleoperators to remotely monitor and intervene if needed.

But the tasks involved go far beyond sitting in a chair in California and steering a stuck robotaxi. These operators will also help develop the interface that connects humans to the cars, essentially designing how remote humans and onboard AI collaborate in real time.

Waymo uses what it calls a “fleet response agent,” a human assistant the vehicle can ping when it gets confused by a complex traffic scenario. These agents can view real-time exterior camera feeds, examine a 3D map of what the vehicle sees and even rewind the footage like a DVR to get better context. “As with the rest of our operations, a helpful human is no more than a touch of a button away,” Waymo said in a blog post.

Tesla's setup appears to be similar. The robotaxis will do the driving, until they don’t. Then a remote human may quietly step in to lend a hand. 

We'll see how it all shakes out in a few weeks—in theory, anyway.

Have a tip? Contact the author: suvrat.kothari@insideevs.com