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.

Tesla (TSLA) has introduced a new direct discount for the Model Y in China as the latest of a series of incentives to boost demand during this critical end-of-quarter push.

The automaker regularly offers discounts at the end of every quarter, but the incentives to boost demand have been the most wide-ranging ever this quarter.

Over the last month, we have been documenting the many sale incentives and discounts that Tesla has put in place to ensure it creates the demand for a record quarter.

Tesla aims to deliver a record number of more than 515,000 vehicles in Q4 in order for its sales not to be down for the whole year. That’s ~30,000 more vehicles than Tesla’s last record quarter, which was Q4 2023.

In Europe, the incentives include a year of free Supercharging and heavy discounts on inventory vehicles.

In the US, there are also good inventory discounts, 3 months of free Supercharger and Full Self-Driving subscription, FSD transfer, and more.

More recently, Tesla also slashed the lease price of the base Model Y and even offered discounted home charging under Tesla Electric for those taking delivery of new vehicles.

And everywhere, Tesla is heavily subsidizing loans with lower interest rates. That has been the main incentive in China, Tesla’s biggest market, until now.

Tesla’s New Discount in China

Today, Tesla announced that it is offering a ¥10,000, the equivalent of $1,380 USD, discount on the final payment for new Model Y vehicles:

The new discount can be combined with Tesla’s subsidized 0% interest financing, which has been Tesla’s main incentive in China all year.

Electrek’s Take

Based on insurance data, Tesla is tracking ahead of last year’s deliveries in China, but it is going to need to beat its last record by a significant margin to make sure not to be down for the whole year.

Model Y is Tesla’s most popular vehicle, but Tesla is also going against the expectation of the design refresh coming early next year, which can negatively affect demand.

This discount is likely to combat that and maintain Tesla’s current good momentum in China.

A group of Tesla vehicles spotted under covers at the automaker’s test track at the Fremont factory is raising some questions.

Tesla has a very small test track on the ground of its first factory, Tesla Fremont, in California.

Now and again, people fly drones over the factory and catch glimpses of new cars being tested. Youtuber ‘Met God in Wilderness’ is one of those drone pilots who regularly fly over the factory and while he didn’t catch vehicle being tested, he did catch some curious vehicles under covers next to the track:

The vehicles are all covered, and therefore, it’s hard to tell exactly what they are, but the different shapes are intriguing and raise some questions.

It looks like three, maybe four, different kinds of vehicles:

We know that Tesla is working on three new specific vehicles: a Model Y design refresh, and two new cheaper models based on Model 3 and Model Y.

All three vehicles are expected to be unveiled early next year.

Electrek’s Take

At the risk of stating the obvious, getting much information from vehicles hidden under cover can be hard. It’s even possible that some of those have shape camouflage, which is sometimes used by automakers – although I don’t remember Tesla ever using that.

So here are my best guesses. Take them for what they are: guesses.

The most interesting ones to me are the first two on the left in the picture above. The last vehicle on the left looks like it could be a smaller Model 3.:

The next one could be its Model Y counterpart:

I also wouldn’t be surprised if a Model Y Juniper, the upcoming refresh, is under one of those covers, but we already had good looks at this one.

What about you? What do you think about these Tesla vehicles? Let us know in the comment section below.