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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n Tesla\u2019s robotaxi service, touted by Elon Musk as the future of his flagging electric-car maker, launched in the company\u2019s home city of Austin on Sunday with about 10 vehicles and a human safety driver on board amid regulatory scrutiny of its self-driving technology.<\/p>\n Shares in Tesla have risen about 50 per cent from this year\u2019s low in early April, with investors hopeful the autonomous ride-hailing service will help revive a company that has suffered declining sales and a consumer backlash against Musk\u2019s political activism.\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite the hype surrounding Tesla\u2019s robotaxi, the launch \u2014 with a company employee seated in the passenger side for safety while leaving the driver\u2019s seat empty \u2014 was low-key and the initial service was open only to a select group of social media influencers. <\/p>\n Shortly before the launch, Musk said on social media that the robotaxi service would begin \u201cwith customers paying a $4.20 flat fee\u201d.<\/p>\n According to Musk, who has stepped back from his US government role to focus on the electric-car maker and the robotaxi, the self-driving Tesla Model Y vehicles will only operate in limited areas, avoid challenging intersections, and have teleoperators who can intervene if problems arise.\u00a0<\/p>\n The limited launch comes as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration continues to carry out multiple investigations into Musk\u2019s claims about the capabilities of Tesla\u2019s autopilot and \u201cfull self-driving\u201d systems. Despite its name, the full self-driving system still requires humans to sit in the driver\u2019s seat and pay full attention \u2014 unlike Google\u2019s Waymo taxis.<\/p>\n The NHTSA wrote a letter in early May seeking additional information about technologies that would be used in Tesla\u2019s robotaxi service. The regulator said it had received Tesla\u2019s response and was reviewing its content. <\/p>\n Musk said in a social media post this month that the company was being \u201csuper paranoid\u201d about safety. But he has also claimed there would be 1,000 robotaxis \u201cin a few months\u201d, and that the service would expand to cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles.<\/p>\n On Sunday, Tesla opened a new website for the public to sign up to get updates on the robotaxis, which can be hailed via an app.<\/p>\n It is unclear how fast Tesla will be able to expand its service and catch up with Waymo, the only company with a fully public self-driving ride-hailing service in the US. Waymo rolled out its fleet in San Francisco three years ago.<\/p>\n A group of Democratic lawmakers in Texas wrote to Tesla recently urging the company to delay its robotaxi launch until September when a new law on autonomous vehicles is due to be implemented.\u00a0State governor Greg Abbott signed the rules \u2014 which require a state permit to operate self-driving vehicles \u2014 into law on Friday.<\/p>\n Tesla\u2019s technology relies only on a set of cameras mounted on its vehicles, compared with the more expensive radar and lidar sensors used by Waymo and other rivals. <\/p>\n Musk claims Tesla\u2019s approach will allow it to expand the service more quickly and at cheaper prices. Tesla has said its Cybercab robotaxi, which has no steering wheel or pedals and was unveiled last year, will sell for less than $30,000.<\/p>\n Rivals including Waymo and Amazon-owned Zoox use remote monitoring systems with support staff able to intervene and guide a vehicle that has ground to a halt because of an obstacle or accident. Unlike Tesla, they do not have a safety driver in the vehicle. <\/p>\n \u201cTesla has in no way demonstrated that its system is capable of the kind of accuracy and reliability that would be necessary for deployment in a range of driving conditions.\u201d said Bryant Walker Smith, an associate professor at the University of South Carolina. <\/p>\n Barclays analyst Dan Levy also cautioned there was still a huge amount of work to be done in building out the infrastructure to enable fully autonomous vehicles, saying \u201ccatching up to or surpassing Waymo will be no small feat\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Tesla\u2019s robotaxi service, touted by Elon Musk as the future of his flagging electric-car maker, launched in the company\u2019s home city of Austin on Sunday with about 10 vehicles and a human safety driver on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1383,1372,1382,745,1381],"class_list":{"0":"post-9288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-launches","10":"tag-robotaxi","11":"tag-service","12":"tag-tesla"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}