Tesla preps a remote control team for robotaxi – taking a page out of Waymo’s book
Tesla has confirmed through a new job listing that it plans to establish a ‘teleoperation’ team to remote control its upcoming robotaxi fleet.
It’s something that Tesla really needs in order to deliver a robotaxi service, and something that market leader Waymo has already deployed.
Waymo and Tesla have widely different approaches to self-driving.
The former is using a variety of sensors from cameras to lidars and operates its self-driving ride-hailing service, which is already commercially available in several markets, in geo-fenced areas that are mapped.
As for Tesla, the automaker relies entirely on cameras and neural networks, which it plans to train to the level of being capable of operating anywhere autonomously.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has often dismissed Waymo’s strategy as “not being scalable” due to the mapping and geo-fencing issues.
But now there’s one thing that Tesla is taking from Waymo’s approach: teleoperation.
Waymo can be a bit vague when talking about the level of teleoperation with its vehicles, but we know that the vehicles can send a “stuck” alert and a team of remote Waymo employees can debug them.
Now, Tesla is also establishing a teleoperation team, according to a new job listing:
Tesla AI’s Teleoperation team is charged with providing remote access to our robotaxis and humanoid robots. 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. This requires building highly optimized low latency reliable data streaming over unreliable transports in the real world. At Tesla, we control the entire hardware and software stack, end to end. Our goal is to integrate our hardware, firmware and backend expertise to achieve a cutting-edge system. Our remote operators are transported into the device’s world using a state-of-the-art VR rig that allows them to remotely perform complex and intricate tasks. Working with hardware teams, you will drive requirements, make design decisions and implement software integration for this custom teleoperation system.
The job is specifically for C++ Software Engineer and the main responsibility is to develop the application that the remote operators will use to assist the robotaxis.
Tesla claims that it will start deploying fleets of robotaxis in California and Texas in Q2 2025.
As for the humanoid robots, Tesla has already started to use them for simple tasks in its manufacturing facilities, but that’s expected to ramp up next year.
Electrek’s Take
This should enable Tesla to launch a service similar to Waymo without having to achieve a “superhuman level of miles between disengagement.”
However, it wouldn’t be exactly what Tesla promised: level 5 full autonomy.
Again, it would enable a similar service that Waymo has been offering for years. To be clear, I’m not against it. It will help Tesla deliver a useful robot ride-hailing service.
It will also be interesting to learn the level of teleoperation Tesla plans to deploy. For example, Waymo has confirmed that its remote team can answer questions from its vehicles to help unstuck them, but it’s not clear if they can actually be remotely operated.
Tesla did lose some credibility on that front after its ‘We, Robot’ event after it didn’t disclose that it’s robots at the event were remotely control before demonstrating them.
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Germany’s largest offshore wind farm under construction, EnBW’s He Dreiht, just hit a big milestone: The first enormous turbine is now up in the North Sea.
He Dreiht – which means “it spins” in Low German – is using Vestas’s massive 15 megawatt (MW) turbines, the first project in the world to install them. Just one spin of one of the rotors can generate enough electricity to power four households for an entire day.
When it’s finished, He Dreiht will have 64 mega turbines cranking out 960 megawatts (MW) of clean power – enough to supply around 1.1 million homes. And it’s being built without any government subsidies.
EnBW, one of Germany’s major energy companies, has been working in offshore wind for more than 15 years, but He Dreiht is their biggest project yet. “It will play a key role in helping us to significantly grow our renewable energy output from 6.6 GW to over 10 GW by 2030,” said Michael Class, who heads up EnBW’s generation portfolio development.
The project is a win for Vestas, too. “With the installation of the first V236-15.0 MW, we have reached an important milestone for both the He Dreiht project and our offshore ramp-up, which helps Germany build a more secure, affordable, and sustainable energy system,” said Nils de Baar, president of Vestas Northern & Central Europe.
He Dreiht is located about 85 kilometers (53 miles) northwest of Borkum and 110 kilometers (68 miles) west of Helgoland. At peak times, more than 500 workers will be out at sea building the farm, using a fleet of more than 60 ships. EnBW’s offshore team in Hamburg is running the show.
The installation process is a major operation. The 64 foundations were already set in the seabed last year. Parts for the turbines are loaded onto the installation vessel Wind Orca in Esbjerg, Denmark, and shipped out in a 12-hour journey to the construction site. From there, the turbines are lifted into place. Meanwhile, crews are also working on internal wind farm cabling.
A partner consortium made up of Allianz Capital Partners, AIP, and Norges Bank Investment Management owns 49.9% of the shares in He Dreiht.
Read more: Trump admin halts $5 billion NY offshore wind project mid-build
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Tesla has released a quick update about its Tesla Semi factory in Nevada. It says that it is on track for volume production of the electric semi truck in 2026.
The Tesla Semi was first scheduled to go into production in 2019, but it has faced numerous delays.
Now, it appears that there is finally some momentum to bring it to volume production.
For the last two years, Tesla has been working to build a new factory next to Gigafactory Nevada, where it builds the battery packs and drive units for most of its electric vehicles built in North America.
Today, Tesla released a “progress update on the factory, confirming that it finished building and it’s now working on deploying the production lines:
Tesla had previously mentioned aiming for volume production by 2025, but it is now only talking about starting production toward the end of the year and ramping up next year.
The automaker reiterated its planned production capacity of 50,000 units.
We recently reported that an early Tesla Semi customer, Ryder, stated that the electric truck program is experiencing more delays and a price increase described as “dramatic.”
They now expect to take deliveries of their first trucks later in 2026 and said that the price has increased “dramatically,” leading them to scale back their pilot program from 42 to 18 Tesla Semi trucks.
When originally unveiling the Tesla Semi in 2017, the automaker mentioned prices of $150,000 for a 300-mile range truck and $180,000 for the 500-mile version. Tesla also took orders for a “Founder’s Series Semi” at $200,000.
However, Tesla didn’t update the prices when launching the “production version” of the truck in late 2022. Price increases have been speculated, but the company has never confirmed them.
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Vietnamese solar panel maker Boviet Solar just opened the doors to its first US factory — a huge new PV module plant in Greenville, North Carolina.
The company dropped $294 million into the state-of-the-art facility, which will pump out Boviet’s Gamma Series monofacial and Vega Series bifacial solar panels. They’re using advanced PERC and N-Type solar cell tech, which basically means these panels are built to deliver higher efficiency and better performance across residential, commercial, industrial, and utility-scale projects.
The Greenville factory’s first phase is now online with an annual PV module output capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW). For Phase 2, which is scheduled to come online in the second half of 2026, Boviet will invest another $100 million to add 600,000 square feet and ramp up to another 2 GW. It will make high-efficiency solar cells.
Once both phases are complete, Boviet’s campus will cover more than 1 million square feet of manufacturing and R&D space. It’s one of the biggest clean energy manufacturing projects North Carolina has ever seen.
The jobs impact is significant, too. The first phase will create 460 skilled local jobs. Phase 2 is expected to add another 908, bringing the total to over 1,300 direct jobs, plus nearly 2,000 more indirect jobs across the region. That’s good news for Pitt County’s economy, real estate market, and workforce training programs.
“This facility is not just creating jobs, but creating opportunity, innovation, and a stronger foundation for eastern North Carolina,” said Senator Kandie Smith. Governor Josh Stein added that Boviet Solar’s move shows how North Carolina is leading the way in clean energy growth.
Read more: Thomas Built Buses debuts its next-gen electric school bus
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