Musk announces launch of Tesla ride-hailing service in Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Tesla has launched a ride-hailing service in the San Francisco Bay Area, Elon Musk announced early Thursday. While the Tesla CEO hinted earlier this month that his company’s driverless robotaxis would soon be rolling out to the region, this service will have a person behind the wheel.

“You can now ride-hail a Tesla in the SF Bay Area, in addition to Austin,” Musk wrote in an overnight post to X.

Another post from Tesla AI’s X account displays a service map with boundaries of Marin County and Berkeley in the north and San Jose to the south. The eastern and western boundaries cover cities near the bayshore.

According to Tesla, invitations to use the ride-hailing service are “going out now.”

On July 9, Musk teased autonomous robotaxis would be coming to the Bay Area after launching in Austin in late June. The robotaxi service is “waiting on regulatory approvals,” Musk wrote on X, but would launch “probably in a month or two.”

Thursday’s announcement of the Tesla ride-hailing service is, in fact, not to be confused with the driverless robotaxi service. Tesla AI Senior Engineer Yun-Ta Tsai described the ride-hailing service as an “On-demand chauffeur, powered by the real world AI.”

Following reports last week from Business Insider that Tesla’s robotaxis could be imminently deployed in San Francisco with human safety monitors in the driver’s seat, California State Senator Scott Wiener said that Tesla has yet to apply for permits to operate autonomous vehicles in California.

“If Tesla actually deploys its AVs in San Francisco without permits, these vehicles should be seized and impounded,” Wiener wrote in the July 25 statement. “We have permitting & safety rules for a reason. Elon Musk isn’t exempt from those rules.”