Tesla says customers can add their own vehicles to the robotaxi fleet next year — will it happen?

Key points

• Tesla says owners will be able to add their own vehicles to its robotaxi fleet in the second quarter of 2027.
• Tesla has a few hundred robotaxis in Texas and Florida, some with human safety monitors, and several dozen fully driverless Cybercabs in Austin.
• Unsupervised ride-hailing needs local and state permits, and in most places it is still illegal to use personal self-driving cars as driverless taxis.

Tesla has set a deadline for letting customers add their own vehicles to its robotaxi fleet. On the company's third-quarter earnings call, VP for Autonomous Driving Ashok Elluswamy said owners should be able to do so in the second quarter of 2027.

Elluswamy said the software for Cybercabs and Model Y is the same and will reach customers in the V15 release. The extra requirement is that a customer's Model Y can work within Tesla's geofences and fleet management for full autonomy.

Past promises and current fleet

The article notes that Tesla has a record of setting bold short-term deadlines that slip by years or never happen. In 2019, Elon Musk said customer vehicles could join a "Tesla Network" of robotaxis and earn owners passive income, and he said a million robotaxis would be on the road by 2020. Neither promise has come true.

Tesla currently has a few hundred robotaxis in Texas and Florida, some with human safety monitors, and several dozen fully driverless Cybercabs in Austin. Over 75 percent of new buyers in North America chose Full Self-Driving (Supervised) this quarter, up almost 20 percentage points from last quarter, though vehicle sales were down and profits dipped.

We suspect somewhere around Q2 next year is when we can turn on some of the first customer vehicles to be part of the robotaxi fleet.

— Ashok Elluswamy

Regulatory and technical hurdles

Unsupervised ride-hailing requires specific local and state regulatory permits, and insurance may be hard to obtain. In most places, it is still illegal for individuals or outside companies to use their own self-driving cars as driverless taxis or passenger rides.

Older Model 3 and Y vehicles without the latest full-self-driving hardware are limited by hardware capability. Cybercabs are built for driverless passenger service, while consumer vehicles need extra software layers to ensure safety without human intervention.