Background During Tesla's Q4 2024 earnings call, CEO Elon Musk announced plans to launch what is called unsupervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) service in Austin, Texas. The service will operate as a paid ride-hailing option, with vehicles operating autonomously without human drivers inside the car.
Resolution Criteria This market will resolve YES if Tesla launches a paid ride-hailing service in Austin, Texas in June 2025 where vehicles operate without human supervision inside the car. The market will resolve NO if:
The launch is delayed beyond June 2025
The service requires human supervision/safety drivers in the car
The service is canceled or not launched at all
The definition of no human driver is clear. The Sawyer merritt and Tesla statements are what they are promising in June. If they launch a paid service without the supervised driver then that counts.
Yes the service must be:
A commercial, paid service
Unsupervised/ no safety driver
It is still YES even if they have the ability to take remote control.
Waymo can take remote control but they are considered by the media as a robotaxi service.
Apollo Go in China, Cruise are considered robotaxi services.
The standard is no human driver in the car and a paid service.
Others can debate their definitions but other questions can be created.
Update 2025-04-30 (PST): - Public access requirement: the service must be bookable by ordinary (non-Tesla employee) customers. If only Tesla employees can book it, the market resolves NO. (AI summary of creator comment)
Update 2025-05-15 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): - Remote monitoring does not count as supervision. The determination of 'unsupervised' focuses on the absence of a human driver in the car.
Update 2025-05-17 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): - Access for non-Tesla employees can be limited by invitation.
Paid rides must still be provided to these invited non-employees for the service to qualify.
Update 2025-05-17 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): - Remote driving or human remote supervision is not a disqualifying factor for the service to be considered unsupervised.
The standard for unsupervised is the absence of a human driver inside the vehicle.
This corrects a previous AI-generated summary from 2025-05-15 which incorrectly stated that human remote supervision would be a disqualifying factor.
1,000
1.00https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1924892128573886968
No safety driver per elon musk for austin launch, CNBC interview today.
https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1924898435632648481
Elon Musk: "By the end of next year, we'll have hundreds of thousands, if not over a million Teslas doing self-driving in the US." - CNBC Interview today
@Berg indeed
https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/22/tesla-plans-to-launch-a-robotaxi-network-in-2020/
“From our standpoint, if you fast forward a year, maybe a year and three months, but next year for sure, we’ll have over a million robotaxis on the road,” Musk said. “The fleet wakes up with an over the air update; that’s all it takes.”
Let's not forget that time in 2016 when Musk said Teslas already had L5 autonomy lmao:
https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13340938/tesla-autopilot-update-model-3-elon-musk-update
@BlueDragon I think your market is a lot stricter than Brian's, so I don't know why the probabilities were about the same.
@TimothyJohnson5c16 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I can’t say my criteria are stricter, I think this market is just higher volume. I’ll add some liquidity to mine.
FWIW I’m not betting in either market, for different reasons.
https://www.investors.com/news/tesla-stock-robotaxi-launch-details-elon-musk/
This market has a very low bar, so a launch like this (10 vehicles, invitation only, teleoperated) would count. And it's still planned for next month.
This market is extremely misleading. The title says "unsupervised" but the resolution criteria say that remote human operators (effectively supervisors) actually don't count. Besides this, the resolution criteria are full of confusing statements. I recommend to change the title and polish up the resolution criteria.
@SimoneRomeo I have clarified. The confusion is with those who do not follow robotaxi for waymo and cruise and that everyone does some level of remote driving or remote assistance. That is the current situation. Having no humans do anything from remote is not provable and would disqualify all of the services that exist today and that are likely to exist this year. It also opens up forecasting resolution problems.
Thanks
@SimoneRomeo I have clarified the term unsupervised versus supervised. Unsupervised refers to no safety driver in the car. This is the terms used by Tesla and is common for the robotaxi industry. So I am not going to purge because I have been clear on the definitions and the general references come up. Tesla calls their system supervised full self driving. It is fully driving but the customer is supervising.
@brianwang do you have a source that says that "unsupervised" can mean that there is a human safe operator? As far as I understand unsupervised means that there's no human involved in the loop, and ChatGPT seems to share the same opinion. I don't think even Tesla claims the opposite
@SimoneRomeo The definition and terms are above in my description of how I am judging it. Get over the fact that I mention unsupervised because I specifically say no human driving the car is the standard. I have defined paid service without a human driver inside the car. I do not have to defend unsupervised specifics. I created a new question because other questions on this Tesla robotaxi topic had definitions and details that I disagreed with. Also, the whole what is the company doing behind the scenes is difficult to prove. Is Waymo using remote drivers ? We know all of the Chinese companies do because they show pictures of the remote driving centers and the China national robotaxi law requires at least one remote driver for every two cars. You are free to go to those other questions. Many of the questions on this site breakdown based on definitions of secondary terms. There was one about whether the US and China would get a tariff deal before June 2025. Clearly, China and the US putting a 90 day pause and dropping the tariffs from 135% to 30% and 10% was a major agreement. But then the judgement might turn on the definition of agreement or how it was announced by each country. My terms are mostly visible from the videos. Is there a human safety driver or not? Is there even one non-Tesla employee. Did that person pay Tesla. Did it happen in Austin? Did it happen before July 1 2025. I set these terms. I am not changing the terms. I don't care what other definitions of unsupervised are. I don't have to justify my selection of terms.
@brianwang BTW I gave someone else a definition of motorcade generated by AI that included the police escort as part of the vehicle procession. Question was would Tesla cars be included in a presidential motorcade by X date. They told me they were adding in the definition of motorcade to only include White house assigned vehicles and they did this AFTER there were two cybertrucks escorting the president in Doha. I am making my definitions clear before any possible resolving event.
@brianwang it's fine that you use your own definitions. When your definitions go against industry conventions, it would be good to help your readers by ensuring maximum clarity.
If you for some reason don't want to remove the word "unsupervised", you could add one line at the very beginning mentioning "attention: in this market unsupervised means that there is no driver but there can be a safety remote operator"
@SimoneRomeo How does it go against industry conventions? Does the Robotaxi Industry Have a Standardized Definition of "Supervised" and "Unsupervised"?
The robotaxi industry does not have a universally standardized definition for "supervised" and "unsupervised." Instead, terminology is often tied to the SAE International’s levels of automation:
Level 2 (Partial Automation): Systems like Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) are considered "supervised," requiring constant human monitoring and intervention readiness.
Level 4 (High Automation): Services like Waymo and Apollo Go operate without a safety driver in specific conditions, often implying "unsupervised" operation, though remote assistance may still be involved.
In practice, "unsupervised" generally refers to vehicles operating without a human safety driver onboard, even if remote operators provide occasional support. Conversely, "supervised" typically describes systems needing active human oversight, either in the vehicle or remotely. However, these terms lack formal, industry-wide standardization, and their usage can vary between companies. The absence of a consistent definition means interpretations depend on context, often aligning with autonomy levels rather than fixed labels.
The AI is misinterpreting what I said. Remote driving is NOT disqualifying. No human driver in the car is the standard for not supervised. I fixed it
It will still be a yes if the non employees are limited by invitation. The non employees paid rides still must be given. The invitation or other initial limitations is similar to the restriction of a section of Austin. The launch of 10-20 vehicles can only give out a hundred or so rides per day.
there are other questions for those who want to ask. The robotaxicounts if there is human remote supervision. Human remote supervision would disqualifies all so called robotaxi services. Waymo, Cruise, apollo Go, Autox etc... so tesla would also still be a robotaxi service with remote humans helping. This is a consistent standard for all robotaxi service. What it does is it harms scaling but it does not change that no human driver is the difference between taxi and robotaxi.
@TiredCliche no remote monitoring does not count as supervision. Remote monitoring will prevent or massively slow scaling of the service. Just like in the old days telephone operators limited what phone service scaling could reach BUT it was still a phone service. A phone service with operators. This will be a taxi service without human drivers IN the car.