Tesla robotaxis finally hit the road in Austin, Texas, in June after years of unfulfilled promises from Musk to deliver driverless cars.

CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that the automaker's vehicles equipped with the AI4 (HW4) chip will be able to achieve unsupervised autonomous driving without requiring upgrades. AI4 Will Be Capable Of Self-Driving On Monday,

Tesla removed its Autopilot basic self-driving software as a standard feature in the US on new Model Y and Model 3 purchases as the company pushes its more advanced FSD (full-self driving) subscriptions.

Empty robotaxis and long drives without interventions make some imagine Tesla FSD is ready to deploy. The math may say the reverse.

Tesla’s robotaxi service has been mostly hypothetical so far, but it’s certainly taking the company’s shareholders for a real ride.

With a struggling core business like this, there's only one way to explain Tesla's price-to-earnings ratio of about 300: The valuation assumes Tesla solves autonomy -- and solves it in a big way that translates into huge sales and profit growth for the company.

On its face, declaring yourself an optimist seems like a reasonable thing to say and believe. But contrast Musk’s sentiment on Thursday with the rhetoric we’ve seen since he signed up to publicly support President Donald Trump in the summer of 2024, and it doesn’t really give a warm and fuzzy feeling.

While regulatory progress on FSD and early ‌robotaxi deployments point to ‌momentum in Tesla's AI ambitions, the technology remains nascent relative to a valuation that far outstrips those of many technology and automotive companies.