Tesla's Robotaxi Launch was a Scam
Tesla's decline is now inevitable with a highly problematic Robotaxi launch muddled with errors and saftey concerns.
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Something has been eating at me for quite some time, the false promises of Elon Musk. I’ll try and be brief today to share some of my concerns:
In the realm of applied artificial intelligence, I’ve been closely following the evolution of autonomous vehicles (AVs), that have been slow to manifest on public roads. Tesla was often heralded as a darling of this technology and its stock valued at way higher multiples based on speculative promises of Robotaxis and humanoid robots. But what happens when Elon Musk promises are demonstrated in an actual Austin, Texas launch?
Elon Musk first announced Tesla's robotaxi plan publicly as far back as April 22, 2019, during Tesla’s "Autonomy Day" event. More than six years later Tesla finally launched its program in Austin earlier in June. But what it demonstrated is a shocking testament to the failure of Tesla’s approach.
Waymo's self-driving pilot programs began testing fully autonomous vehicles in Phoenix, Arizona, in 2016. This means Tesla is functionally almost a decade behind not just Waymo, but Baidu’s Apollo program and probably Amazon’s too. Waymo began offering fully autonomous rides to the public in October 2020 in the Phoenix, Arizona area. Tesla had decided that cameras and computer vision were all you need, but is that holding true all these years and promises later? Tesla’s Robotaxi launch comes five long years after Waymo. Tesla’s Robotaxi program was dubbed the future of autonomy. But is it?
Tesla’s long awaited June launch of its “robotaxi” requires a lot of qualifiers: it was supervised, open only to a few invitees and included somewhere between just 10-20 vehicles - which is a tiny sample size that was cherry picked too (more on that later). That is, we didn’t even witness true autonomous vehicles and there were multiple snags.
Elon Musk is a master showman but this has to be a very disappointing launch for Tesla that is seeing global sales decline for many consecutive months. Tesla’s capabilities in Robotaxis were shockingly bad. One vehicle drove on the wrong side of the road, one vehicle stopped in the middle of traffic, one braked suddenly on a 40 mph street and another vehicle dropped off a passenger in the middle of an intersection. Elon Musk has been fooling shareholders for years on the idea that Robotaxi or robots were the way forward for his struggling EV company.
Tesla’s robotaxi rollout has been rockier than the fanboys and influencers who got early access to the company’s driverless vehicles would like you to believe. - (The Verge)
Most of the Tesla fans and influencers who received invites to test it out said the experience was “smooth” and “natural.” So why was the actual performance of these vehicles anything but? It’s a very poor sign for a stock that many analyst believe is drastically overvalued. With declining sales in Europe and China, in 2025 its fairly clear Chinese EV makers have overtaken Tesla.
No LiDAR Big Problems
Tesla’s decision to forgo either sensors or LiDAR rigs to accomplish their self-driving deployments looks to be a dramatic mistake in cost cutting. Meanwhile Tesla vehicles have dropped in sales for a fifth consecutive month in Europe, particularly as Tesla continues to face the heat from Chinese EV manufacturers who compete with the firm on the basis of cost and quality. When Chinese EV makers push into Europe and other regions in 2026, Asia and Australia you will see what happens when Tesla goes head to head with Chinese makers.
It took years for Waymo, pretty much a decade of testing and pilots to get to the point where it’s almost ready to go to New York. Waymo is of course the spinout from Alphabet, and is taking its first crack at New York City, filing a permit for autonomous vehicle testing. Tesla’s Camera only approach is clearly more dangerous and more prone to nonsensical errors. It’s also drastically less reliable in difficult weather conditions. Tesla's robotaxi approach uniquely relies exclusively on cameras for its autonomous driving system, eschewing radar and LiDAR sensors that competitors like Waymo and Zoox use.
Tesla’s Robotaxis Still aren’t Ready for the Mainstream
Being such a controversial stock, a lot of analysts are on the take but thanks to these diligent Redditors, we now have a list of all the mistakes the company’s “unsupervised” vehicles have made in the first couple days.
Robotaxi cuts off a car, then randomly brakes (potentially because of an upcoming tree shadow?)
Robotaxi unexpectedly slams on brakes, causing rider to drop phone
Robotaxi comes to a complete stop after approaching an object, then runs it over (rider says it's a shopping bag,
though the car visibly bump up and down)(UPDATE: Some people have pointed out that the car's movement is from a speed bump immediately after the bag/object. The speed bump is more visible at full resolution.)
After years of promising by Elon Musk, Tesla looks like it simply hasn’t executed on AVs. I don’t know how the Robotaxis program can now be saved, much less scaled with the quality of this launch. While the stock market hits nearly all-time highs once again in late June, 2025, Tesla’s stock is still down 15% for the year. Should this be a $1 Trillion dollar company? A brand on the decline with an AV program that uses fundamentally the wrong technology? Oddly it was hard to get decent media coverage of the Austin launch.
Phantom Breaking and Other Mishaps
What did most media reports not cover? Several incidents involve “phantom braking,” in which the vehicle stops suddenly for seemingly no reason.
The list of Robotaxi failures after all this time is mind-blowing. Some are relatively minor, like failing to recognize a reversing UPS truck while trying to pull into a parking space or driving over a curb. Others are more worrisome, like briefly driving on the wrong side of the road or dropping passengers off in the middle of a busy intersection. This isn’t something that should get permits outside of Austin. The optics of Tesla backers and influencers pretending the launch went well is just - the sort of dishonesty you can now expect in America.
Even with a highly controlled launch and such a tiny sample size, so many errors were documented. Even if things were substantially in terms of performance, Tesla’s Robotaxis are too far beyond Waymo, Baidu and market leaders to compete. Baidu is already planning to expand to the Middle East and Europe in 2026. Tesla is arguably years behind, if not totally redundant in its Robotaxi program at this point. Indeed, the Reddit list includes three incidents of phantom braking. You can rationalize that this Robotaxi event means Waymo is worth much more than we thought. Waymo has partnered with Uber in Atlanta recently.
Tesla Keeps failing in Elon Musk’s Biggest Promises
There’s a good reason nearly everyone experimenting with this tech went with LiDAR and not just Cameras. Tesla's long-awaited robotaxi service finally launched on June 22, 2025, in Austin, Texas and the results are as poor as you might have expected if you've been following the evidence and the limitations of the Camera over LiDAR approach.
The Tesla Robotaxis in Austin are Model Y SUVs equipped with the company’s latest FSD Unsupervised software and hardware. After all this time, Tesla’s launch should have gone smoothly, but it did not (inspite of claims to the contrary). How can you trust Tesla’s approach in fog, rain or even with too much sunlight glare? It just doesn’t make sense with the evidence obtained even from this very controlled launch with mostly their own influencers in Austin!
Tesla’s Hoard of Influencers
The sad part? Even who was allowed to join the launch was rigged. This kind and level of deception would only occur with a fundamentally broken technology. The service is now limited to invited users, who agree to the terms of Tesla’s “early access program.” Those who have received invites are mostly promoters of Tesla’s products, stock and CEO.
Significant Challenges and Concerns
Safety Incidents: The launch quickly drew regulatory scrutiny after concerning videos surfaced showing robotaxis:
Driving in the wrong lane
Braking hard in the middle of traffic for no apparent reason
Going straight through intersections from turning lanes
Responding inappropriately to stationary police vehicles
If you have been testing for half a decade or longer, these aren’t mistakes that are minor to me. I hope regulators feel the same way! The major problem? Tesla Robotaxis are operating in a regulatory vacuum.
So why does this anger so many people? It’s the way Elon Musk has been promising its Robotaxi technology and promoting a future version of Tesla that has been late, executed poorly or downright deceptive to shareholders and the general public.
Elon Musk’s Pattern of Lies
In 2015, Musk told shareholders Tesla cars would achieve “full autonomy” within three years.
In 2016, he said a Tesla EV would be able to make a cross-country drive without needing any human intervention before the end of 2017.
And in 2019, on a call with institutional investors that helped him raise more than $2 billion, Musk said Tesla would have 1 million robotaxi-ready vehicles on the road in 2020, able to complete 100 hours of driving work per week each, making money for their owners.
Many many years later, the situation has not considerably improved. We are talking a full decade later!
There are dozens to hundreds of instances of Elon Musk and Tesla’s stock supporters lying about this technology and its capabilities. Meanwhile Tesla keeps losing talent and firing people.
Let’s not pretend that Tesla is an AI or AV leader. I’m slightly more optimistic about its humanoid robotics program. Robotics is something as an emerging tech analyst that I cover too.
Loss of Confidence in Tesla is a Global Phenomena
To make matters worse, Tesla's own Autopilot and FSD systems has a very poor saftey record with multiple accidents and deaths. Who would even buy a Tesla at this point in 2025? Tesla’s sales are down nearly everywhere in the world - in China Tesla delivered 61,662 China-made Model 3 and Model Y vehicles (including exports), a 15% decrease from May 2024 to May 2025. In Europe the numbers are even worse.
Tesla sales in Canada, particularly in Quebec—the country’s largest and most critical electric vehicle (EV) market—have experienced a dramatic decline in the first quarter of 2025. In Q1 2025, Tesla registrations in Quebec fell by approximately 85–90% compared to both the previous quarter and the same period the previous year. Only 524 new Teslas were registered between January and March 2025, down from over 5,000 in the previous quarter and more than 4,000 a year earlier. You can look at region by region across the world and the numbers are insane.
In May 2025, Tesla sold 1,210 cars in Germany, a decrease of 36.2% compared to May 2024, according to the German road traffic agency KBA. That’s the fifth month of declining sales in Germany.
Tesla sales in California fell by 15% to 21% in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, according to multiple sources, including the California Energy Commission and the California New Car Dealers Association. In terms of momentum, this is how automotive brands die.
In China, even Tech companies like Xiaomi are turning heads compared to Tesla. Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi revealed its luxury YU7 SUV will cost less than Tesla’s Model Y. Xiaomi’s luxury YU7 SUV will start at 253,500 yuan ($35,322), CEO Lei Jun announced this past week. The YU7 received more than 200,000 orders within just three minutes of its launch, Xiaomi said.
While Tesla sold only 8,600 vehicles in China during the first week of June, a significant drop from the previous week.
Elon Musk and Sabotage of the Tesla Brand
To say that Elon Musk’s personal brand and his entry into politics and DOGE and European political interference has hurt Tesla brand and sales is also true. The stock has been propped up for years by a number of Billionaire backers and they have funded a toxic fan-boy culture that is based on falsehoods and attacking critics. Over time this begins to erode trust even further in the Tesla brand. This also leads to less factual coverage and critics of the stock and Tesla’s toxic culture.
So how do you recover from such a poor Robotaxi launch when you are even late to the party? The Austin Robotaxi event shows you how far Tesla still has to go to even compete with Waymo and others.
Regulatory Response:
NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) contacted Tesla immediately after the incidents
The agency stated it "will take any necessary actions to protect road safety"
Tesla has requested that its responses to NHTSA questions remain confidential business information
The truth is you didn’t need Reddit sleuths to know how the Robotaxi pilot would perform. You just had to be following the story to know how flawed Tesla’s Camera approach was. What happend to the idea that Tesla owners would rent their cars out to a global Robotaxis program and make them money on the side when not in use? Some of the most deceptive sales tactics in the history of technology. In many regions of the world you are now embarrassed to own a Tesla.
Tesla’s Master Plan, Part Deux, envisioned a future where every Tesla owner would be able to “add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you’re at work or on vacation, significantly offsetting and at times potentially exceeding the monthly loan or lease cost.”
Elon Musk is talented at starting and scaling companies but when the going gets tough, he’d prefer to enter politics than compete directly with the Chinese. For Tesla, now it’s slowly becoming too late. This is how downward spirals for brands occur, consumer brands. Don’t pretend you are a tech company if you can’t even compete with Chinese companies. The robotaxi and robot thesis is considerably weaker now in 2025 for even Tesla’s stock.
If your technology is postponed for years and arrives in a half-broken state, who is ever going to believe anything you say? For Tesla and its stakeholders, it’s reached comical proportions of fraud.
If you don’t believe me, compare today’s reality of the Robotaxi program with the wikipedia on Elon Musk’s statements about Robotaxis and his various promises down the years. Elon Musk’s patterns of exaggerations and over-promising are going to catch up with him especially with regard to the Robotaxi program at Tesla.
I wanted to write the article I wish
would have written who actually covers AVs as a journalist. Because I feel the actual account of Tesla’s Robotaxis launch is significant. It also is more evidence and supports what many of us have believed all along, that Tesla’s Robotaxi dream is a scam based on the wrong approach to the technology.When you have invested Billions into the wrong approach, it’s easier to continue pretending like you have the right approach, than admit your mistakes. For me this single topic tarnishes the legacy of Elon Musk more professionally, than any one other thing.
Kindly share this article if you believe this reporting is valuable. I’m likely going to be attacked for telling the truth.
Full disclosure: I don’t own any Tesla stock nor do I short Tesla’s stock. Nor would I be comfortable using either FSD or stepping into a Robotaxi made by this company. Maybe I’m just cautious? Here are some other sections on my Newsletter publication that may be of interest to you:
The idea that Tesla’s Robotaxi launch in Austin was a success in mid 2025, simply isn’t true of factual. The very business of an independent analyst or journalist is siding with the truth while risking not being aligned with Billionaires or the ultra-elite.
Great post. As the owner of a cameras-only Tesla I can vouch that the decision to remove radar and LiDAR sensors was a massive fail. Cameras are massively weather dependent.
"the demise of Tesla is inevitable"
How do I take this bet Michael?
We should do a bet based on market cap.