Tesla launches driverless robotaxi Miami no safety monitor fifth city
Tesla now runs driverless robotaxis in Miami with no safety monitor, its fifth city and first outside Texas and California. It enters a market where Alphabet's Waymo already operates and Amazon's Zoox is testing. The launch lands while NHTSA probes Tesla's camera-only system i
Tesla () has taken its biggest step yet toward driverless ride-hailing, launching its Robotaxi service in Miami with no safety monitor in the vehicle. It is the company's fifth city and its first outside Texas and California. VP of AI Software Ashok Elluswamy confirmed the Miami rides began fully unsupervised, a faster jump than in Austin, where Tesla initially placed a monitor in the passenger seat. The service covers a 10 to 14 square mile zone in western Miami-Dade, excluding downtown and Brickell. Tesla is not entering an empty market: Alphabet's () Waymo launched in Miami in April and Amazon's () Zoox is testing there. What makes this launch consequential is the timing and the environment. Miami's sudden tropical downpours and intense glare are exactly the conditions at the center of a federal investigation: in March the NHTSA escalated its probe into Tesla's camera-only Full Self-Driving system to an engineering analysis, the final step before it can seek a recall, after finding the system fails to detect or warn under degraded visibility. Tesla is now running that system commercially, without a human backup, in one of the hardest climates for camera-based autonomy.