By Bernard Condon
Federal road safety regulators are considering suspected issues testing a test of “Robotakis” self-driving in Texas after video suddenly brakes, passes through intersections from lanes, or drives on the wrong side of the road.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Tuesday it had requested information from Tesla about the apparent error. Many other videos show that Robotaxis is driving perfectly, but if regulators find a major issue, it is likely that they will question Musk’s repeated statement that Robotaxis is safe, and his assertion that Tesla will rule the future where almost every car on the road is not behind the wheel – or require a steering wheel at all.
“The NHTSA is aware of the case referenced and is in contact with the manufacturer and collecting additional information,” the agency said in a statement.
Tesla Robotaxis passengers on the roads in Austin, Texas have generally been impressed, with shares rising 8% on Monday. Investors have been more cautious on Tuesday after news of the NHTSA investigation, with stocks down more than 2%.
Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A bullish Tesla Financial Analyst driven by Robotakshi on Sunday, when the test runs began, said he had a perfect ride, and the YouTube video showing the error was no big deal.
“All the problems they encounter will be fixed,” said Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities. The test has been called a “great success” despite being a skeptic in the past three days.
One of these skeptics, a telemetry insight expert at Car Technology, said the video is fully wary of the tests currently running to stop.
“The system has always had very unstable performance and often works very well, but it frequently creates random, inconsistent but dangerous errors,” says Sam Abuelsamid in the text, referring to Tesla’s autonomous driving software. “This is not a system that should be tested on public roads without carrying the public or having trained test drivers behind the wheels.”
In one video, Tesla moves into the lane with a large yellow arrow, showing that it’s only a left turn, but instead goes straight through the intersection and enters the other lane on the other side. The car appears to have noticed that it made some mistakes and started shaking several times and started twitching back and forth before the steering wheel finally settled down.
However, Tesla travels for 10 seconds in the opposite lane. At the time, there was no opposing traffic.
Money manager Rob Maurer, the passenger in the car who posted the video, shrugged the incident.
“There are no vehicles anywhere, so this was not a safety issue,” Maurer said in the commentary accompanying his video. “I wasn’t uncomfortable with the situation.”
Another video shows Tesla suddenly stopping twice in the middle of the road, possibly responding to the flashing light of a police car. However, police are clearly not interested in Tesla or the traffic behind it. Because they park on a side road that is not nearby, and they are dealing with obviously unrelated events.
Federal regulators last year began an investigation into what masks call fully autonomous driving and how Teslas responded in low visibility conditions after several accidents, including fatal accidents. Tesla recalled 2.4 million vehicles at the time.
Musk says that Tesla, which uses fully autonomous driving, is safer than human drivers, and that Robotaxis will be successful so quickly with a new, improved system of systems, so that it will be able to deploy hundreds of thousands by the end of next year.
But even if Austin’s tests work, billionaires face major challenges. Other autonomous driving companies have launched taxis, including Amazon’s Zoox and current market leader Waymo. The company recently announced it had recorded 10 million paid rides.
Musk needs a victory at Robotaxis. His work in the Trump administration, as a cost-cutting emperor, has alienated many buyers and blocked sales within Tesla’s traditional environmentally conscious and liberal foundations in the United States. European buyers also balked in both the UK and Germany after Musk embraced some extreme right-wing politicians earlier this year.
Original issue: June 24th, 2025, 7:30pm EDT
