Failure to Launch

As Tesla prepares for the slated June launch of its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, there's a pretty big elephant in the room: that its autonomous driving services leave a lot to be desired.

As Forbes reports, the serious safety concerns surrounding Tesla's so-called "Full Self-Driving" may result in CEO Elon Musk's robotaxi service being dead on arrival.

"It's going to fail for sure," billionaire and longtime Tesla critic Dan O'Dowd told Forbes.

Along with founding defense and aerospace contractor Green Hills Software, O'Dowd established a nonprofit, The Dawn Project, whose main purpose is warning the public about the dangers of unproven self-driving tech, particularly Tesla's FSD, and lobbying against its legality.

Still, he's done some of his own research to reach his Tesla-negative stance.

"We drove it around Santa Barbara for 80 minutes, and there were seven failures," he told Forbes. "If there had not been a driver sitting in the driver's seat, it would’ve hit something."

Highway To Hell

It's not just O'Dowd questioning Musk's plans to launch a driverless ride-hailing service in Austin.

As Electrek reports, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) tapped Tesla earlier this week to release its FSD data ahead of the robotaxi launch next month. The agency — which is investigating Tesla for several safety defects — became concerned that the robotaxi launch may use FSD, which has proven to be quite dangerous.

"The agency would like to gather additional information about Tesla’s development of technologies for use in 'robotaxi' vehicles," wrote Tanya Topka, the NHTSA's defect investigation investigator,  in an email obtained by Electrek, "to understand how Tesla plans to evaluate its vehicles and driving automation technologies for use on public roads."

Around the time that the NHTSA letter was revealed, The Information reported that as of April, Tesla had not yet started testing its autonomous cabs without safety drivers.

Outstanding Questions

As Forbes notes, there's still a lot we don't know about the Robotaxi launch, including when exactly it will happen and how it will operate.

Neither Tesla nor the city of Austin has been very open about those plans with the media, and the only thing anyone has gleaned so far about it is that it will be much more limited than expected, with a maximum of 20 self-driving Model Ys trawling specific areas of the Texas capital.

With all that uncertainty, one would not blame Musk for pushing back the robotaxi launch — but if history is to once again repeat itself, he won't give up the ghost until the very last second.

More on Robotaxis: Elon Musk's "Robotaxis" Have a Dirty Secret

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Tesla’s Robotaxi Launch Is Already an Enormous Mess