For more than a year, Elon Musk has repeatedly said that Tesla is just months away from launching a driverless robotic taxi service in California—as soon as state regulators approve it.
According to previously unpublished records from the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), the agency responsible for registering motor vehicles and issuing driver's licenses in California, Tesla did nothing in 2025 to obtain this approval.
The records show that Musk's car company recorded zero miles of autonomous test driving on California roads last year for the sixth year in a row.
Documenting test miles is key to California's regulatory system for robotaxis, which requires companies to complete a series of permits before operating a driverless service, such as Alphabet's Waymo.
The cornerstone of ambition
Much of Tesla's $1.5 trillion market value is tied to investors' belief that the company will soon operate a large fleet of robotaxis and sell millions of subscriptions to its autonomous driving software. Operating driverless vehicles in California—the largest auto market in the US—is the cornerstone of these ambitions.
Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina and an expert on autonomous driving who has served as a consultant to the California DMV, said Tesla is suggesting that "they are ready, and regulators are not," when the reality is that "regulators are ready, and they are not."
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters. At an October earnings call, Musk told analysts that the company is "paranoid about safety" and takes a "cautious approach" to new markets. "We could probably let it run freely in these cities," he said, "but we just don't want to take the risk."
Tesla currently operates only a small pilot robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, where there are far fewer regulatory hurdles than in California.
Lack of mileage
In the San Francisco Bay Area, the company launched a service in July last year called "Robotaxi," but it was not a robotaxi service at all. Instead, it is a service with human drivers who use Tesla's Full Self-Driving software, which is not fully autonomous, according to the state regulator that approved the service.
In order for Tesla to operate fully autonomous vehicles in California, such as Waymo, it would first have to obtain permits to test and operate driverless vehicles from the DMV and the Public Utilities Commission, which regulates commercial vehicle transportation.
Tesla currently only has a basic license from the DMV. This allows Musk's company to test driverless vehicles, but with a person in the driver's seat to monitor safety. The regulatory authority also stated that the carmaker had not applied for any further permits.
Under the proposed DMV rules, which the agency is expected to finalize by the end of this year, Tesla would have to drive at least 50,000 miles (roughly 80,000 kilometers) of autonomous driving on public roads in California with a safety driver before applying for another permit allowing testing without one.
Tesla has not reported any miles to California state regulators since 2019 and has documented only 562 miles (approximately 900 kilometers) in total since 2016.
Waymo is much further ahead
In comparison, Waymo has driven more than 13 million test miles (nearly 21,000 kilometers) and has obtained seven different regulatory permits between 2014 and 2023. Waymo is one of three companies with California permits for commercial operation of driverless vehicles and the only company with a permit to operate a fleet of robotic taxis.
Last year, Tesla criticized some of the proposed revisions to California's autonomous driving rules in comments and questioned the need for testing on state roads and the minimum mileage requirements. The automaker also complained about "overly burdensome reporting requirements" for accidents and other system failures.
Musk has often suggested that California regulations are the main obstacle to the deployment of robotic taxis in that US state. On an earnings conference call in October 2024, he said that California has a "fairly long regulatory approval process."
"I would be shocked if they didn't approve us next year," he added, noting that "it's just not something we can completely control."
(reuters, im)