Tesla (TSLA) obtains ride-hailing permit in California, no robotaxi yet

Tesla (TSLA) has officially obtained a permit in California to operate an internal fleet for a ride-hailing service, but it’s not for robotaxi yet.

In fact, the automaker hasn’t even applied for an autonomous driving permit yet.

A few weeks ago, it was reported that Tesla had applied for a ride-hailing permit in California.

Even though many linked it to Tesla’s Robotaxi effort, it was specifically for the right to operate an internal fleet of vehicles with drivers to offer a ride-hailing service.

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Tesla had already disclosed that it was offering such a service to its employees in the Bay Area.

Now, the CPUC has confirmed that it has approved Tesla’s application (via Reuters):

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) said it approved Tesla’s application for a transportation charter-party carrier permit (TCP), a license typically associated with chauffeur-operated services, allowing the company to own and control a fleet of vehicles and transport employees on pre-arranged trips.

After Tesla’s stock crashed 5% today, the automaker’s stock went up 1.3% in aftermarket trading on the news.

The speculation is that this is in anticipation of Tesla launching its “robotaxi service”, but a CPUC spokesperson confirmed that the permit doesn’t allow Tesla to do that and that the automaker has yet to apply for a permit that would enable such a service.

Last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed that Tesla would launch “unsupervised self-driving in Texas and California in Q2 2025.” That’s within the next 4 months.

However, we suspected that this would not be “unsupervised self-driving’ in customer vehicles like Tesla has been promising since 2016, but an internal fleet with teleoperation support in a geo-fenced area for ride-hailing services, much like Waymo has been doing for years.

Sure enough, Musk confirmed last month that this was the plan for Austin in June. We describe this as a “moving of the goal post” for Tesla.

With the focus on Austin in June, Tesla stopped talking about California, which was announced to happen at the same time as Texas last year.

Currently, the prediction market Polymarket puts the odds of Tesla launching robotaxis in California in 2025 at 29%:

Electrek’s Take

As I previously stated, I believe Tesla will use this permit to expand its existing ride-hailing test program in California to non-employees.

It will use that to iron out the ride-hailing system while it continues to work on its self-driving system, which is obviously the hard part to solve.

That said, I wouldn’t be completely shocked if Tesla launched a “robotaxi” in California this year. It just won’t be what Tesla has been promising for years: customer vehicles built since 2016 would be capable of self-driving at a robotaxi-level (4-5 SAE levels).

Instead, it will be an internal fleet with teleoperation support in a geo-fenced area, much like Waymo has been offering in California, Arizona, and Texas for years.