Tesla has public his future set on his robotaxis. Now the company is planning to launch a public car service in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tesla calls it a “robotaxi” service, but legally these cars must use with human drivers.
The plan seems to place the maker of electric cars in dark legal waters in an American state with the most tightly regulated autonomous vehicle industry in the country – and where Tesla is already being sued for misleading language surrounding his driver's assistance technology.
On Friday, a spokesperson for the California Public Utilities Commission, who arranges Ride-Hailing and TaxiServices in the state, said that Tesla announced the agency on Thursday that it was planning to expand a taxi service for employees to friends and family of employees and “selected” members of the public. From a technical point of view, Tesla is legal in the clear to launch this type of service in California: in March it obtained a “Transport Charter Party” permit to take Tesla employees on proposed trips with a driver behind the wheel. But Tesla is not legally permitted to serve an autonomous vehicle -based service there.
“Tesla may not test or transport the public (paid or unpaid) in a [autonomous vehicle] With or without a driver, “wrote CPUC spokesperson TerrieS Prosper in an e-mail.” Tesla may transport the public (paid or unpaid) in a non-autonomous vehicle, which would of course have a driver. “
Business Insider reported for the first time that Tesla told employees that it was planning to launch a “robotaxi” service in the Bay Area on Friday.
During a Wednesday call with investors, Tesla Vice -President of AI software Ashok Elluswamy said Tesla “cooperates with the government to get approval” to launch in the Bay Area. “In the meantime, we are only launching the service with a person in the driver's seat to speed up while we are waiting for the regulations approval,” he said.
From a legal point of view, however, Tesla is currently not allowed to launch any service with autonomous vehicles, which means that “person in the driver's seat” must be a driver. Tesla has no permit to pilot autonomous vehicle technology, even with a safety driver, says Prosper: “So it cannot use an autonomous vehicle in the passenger service.”
Tesla seems to talk here from both sides of his mouth. The company seems to allow supervisors that it simply has a taxi service in California, while it suggests that the shareholders and Wall Street suggest that the new taxi service is used “robotaxis” and is autonomous. The automaker seems to have used the technology earlier. It is currently in the administrative court at the state of California due to accusations that Tesla has misled consumers for years by using language such as “Steering machine” and “fully self -driving” to sell technology that cannot drive, but must always be seen by a human director.
“Tesla could not have been in both directions,” says Philip Koopman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies autonomous vehicle safety. The Automaker “gives California more ammunition for the false advertising right to the right by insisting that it is a robotaxi if they tell regulators that it really is not.”
