Tesla's robotaxis are moving in reverse | TechCrunch
SearchSubmit
Site Search Toggle
Mega Menu Toggle
Topics
Latest
AI
Amazon
Apps
Biotech & Health
Climate
Cloud Computing
Commerce
Crypto
Enterprise
EVs
Fintech
Fundraising
Gadgets
Gaming
Government & Policy
Hardware
Layoffs
Media & Entertainment
Meta
Microsoft
Privacy
Robotics
Security
Social
Space
Startups
TikTok
Transportation
Venture
More from TechCrunch
Staff
Events
Startup Battlefield
StrictlyVC
Newsletters
Podcasts
Videos
Partner Content
TechCrunch Brand Studio
Crunchboard
Contact Us
Image Credits: Tim Goessman/Bloomberg / Getty Images
Transportation
Tesla’s robotaxis are moving in reverse
Sean O'Kane
9:29 AM PDT · July 23, 2026
Tesla’s budding "Robotaxi" network drove fewer miles for paying customers in the second quarter than it did in the first, according to a chart the company released on Wednesday.
The quarter-over-quarter decline runs counter to Tesla’s rhetoric and actions in the past year. Tesla has staked much of its future on the idea of a massive, low-cost, cash-generating Robotaxi fleet — or going "balls to the wall for autonomy," as CEO Elon Musk framed it in 2024. The quarterly step-down in Robotaxi miles also comes amid weakening profits in Tesla’s core businesses, which underperformed Wall Street’s expectations, according to figures released Wednesday. Tesla’s stock plunged more than 13% in early trading on Thursday.
At a passing glance, the chart appears to show steady growth in paid Robotaxi rides between August 2025 and June 2026. But the numbers displayed are cumulative, and when broken down by quarter, they show that Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet of Model Y SUVs carrying paying passengers covered around 1.1 million miles in the first quarter. That fell to roughly 700,000 miles in the second quarter, a decline of about 36%.
That’s despite the fact that the company has expanded its nascent operation to six cities across Texas and Florida, with a mix of unsupervised and supervised vehicles.
Image Credits: Tesla
It’s likely Tesla is counting the paid miles driven in the San Francisco Bay Area, too, even though these branded Robotaxis don’t have the state-required permits to operate autonomously and also have a safety driver behind the wheel. Tesla has referred to that operation as part of its "Robotaxi coverage."
The decline in miles driven also comes as Tesla made a striking admission on a conference call Wednesday about its second-quarter results. In response to a question about how slowly Tesla is scaling the Robotaxi service, Musk said the company needs to "accumulate driving data that is specific to the Cybercab" — the company’s gold, purpose-built, two-seater sedan that is expected to make up the bulk of its autonomous vehicle fleet — "before we can put a lot of them on the road."
"Unlike, say, Model 3, Model Y, and our other vehicles where we’ve got a lot of vehicles on the road, millions of vehicles on the road, we don’t have that for Cybercab. So we actually have to accumulate miles with Cybercabs that are retrofitted with steering wheels and acceleration and braking pedals, that kind of thing, to calibrate to the Cybercab chassis," he said. "As we are confident about that, the number of Cybercabs in cities will increase dramatically."
This represents something of a break from claims the company has made for years about how its fleet of nearly 10 million customer cars has been silently collecting data in the background to train future robotaxis (in addition to training the driver assistance software for consumers, which Tesla calls Full Self-Driving).
On the call, Tesla executives framed the slow progress as a matter of being cautious about safety.
"Our goals are very ambitious for Robotaxi, but we do need to be cautious about causing any accidents or causing any harm to anyone," Musk said.
He then said he doesn’t want Tesla Robotaxis causing accidents because he thinks bad media coverage could lead to a regulatory crackdown.
"Although there are, I think, 30 to 40,000 automotive deaths per year in the United States alone, most of those do not generate any press, you don’t really read about almost any of those. But if we injure even one person, it will be worldwide headline news, and regulators will immediately clamp down on our activities," he said.
Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s VP of AI, boasted that Tesla’s Robotaxis have had "zero notable incidents" while driving "more than 380,000 miles" without a safety operator onboard. He did not define what the company considers "notable incidents," though he claimed that "any reports have been of other actors impacting us when we were stationary."
Tesla has reported 22 crashes to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the year since it started trialing its Robotaxi service. While most of them involve other cars crashing into Tesla’s Robotaxis, the company has reported three crashes caused by its...