Tesla robotaxi mileage became the uncomfortable center of the company’s latest earnings call, where CEO Elon Musk and AI chief Ashok Elluswamy described a program expanding across cities while outside reporting pointed to a much slower picture.
Elluswamy said Tesla’s unsupervised robotaxis have logged 380,000 miles in six cities across two states. Musk said miles driven were rising by 10 percent a week. He also said Tesla was scaling the service “as fast as humanly possible” while trying to avoid harming anyone, including pets.
That is the company’s preferred version: more locations, more driving, more riders getting into vehicles without a human supervisor. The Verge reported a less tidy version after the call, citing mileage that appears roughly flat, a vehicle count that appears to be falling, and unresolved questions about safety. Electrek also reported that Tesla’s own chart showed robotaxi growth had flattened.
How much has Tesla’s robotaxi service driven?
According to Elluswamy, Tesla’s unsupervised robotaxi fleet has driven 380,000 miles total across six cities in two states. Musk said on the call that the weekly mileage figure was growing by 10 percent, but the company’s broader claims are being tested against reported data showing little visible acceleration.
The mismatch matters because robotaxi services are judged less by stage demos than by accumulated real-world miles, city-by-city operating limits, fleet size, and incident history. A self-driving service that expands slowly can still be meaningful. A service whose public narrative outruns its operating footprint is a different animal.
Tesla executives also claimed there had been “zero notable incidents,” according to The Verge. That wording leaves room for argument because “notable” is not the same as “none,” and the company’s safety record for the robotaxi service remains an open question in the reporting. Tesla’s claim is still the company’s claim, not an independent audit.
What makes Tesla’s robotaxi approach different?
Tesla’s robotaxi system uses a camera-only approach, according to the company’s executives. That separates it from competitors that use lidar sensors, which measure distance with laser pulses and are commonly used by autonomous-vehicle companies to build a detailed view of the road around the car.
Elluswamy used the call to criticize companies that rely on lidar, The Verge reported. That argument is familiar Tesla territory: fewer sensors, more neural-network confidence, and a lot of faith that cameras can do the job at scale. The engineering bet may eventually pay off, but the current public numbers do not yet look like the kind of broad rollout Musk has often promised.
For riders and cities, the practical question is plain. Tesla says the service is expanding and racking up miles. The available reporting says the growth story is, at minimum, messier than the pitch.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.
