Tesla robotaxi miles fell 36% even as cities expanded
Tesla's paid robotaxi miles fell about 36% in the second quarter, dropping from roughly 1.1 million miles to about 700,000, even as the service expanded to new cities — a rare reverse for a bet Elon Musk has framed as central to the company's future. Reports on why tesla8217s robotaxis are moving in reverse draw on TechCrunch coverage of Tesla's own figures.
Key Takeaways
- Paid Robotaxi miles fell from about 1.1 million in Q1 to roughly 700,000 in Q2, a decline of about 36%.
- Tesla has expanded the nascent operation to six cities across Texas and Florida, with supervised and unsupervised vehicles.
- Musk said Tesla must accumulate Cybercab-specific driving data before putting many purpose-built robotaxis on the road.
- Executives framed slow scaling as caution on safety and media risk, while claiming unsupervised miles are growing about 10% weekly.
- Tesla's stock plunged more than 13% in early Thursday trading after core businesses underperformed Wall Street expectations.
How steep was the drop in paid robotaxi miles?
According to a chart Tesla released Wednesday, cumulative paid Robotaxi rides looked like steady growth from August 2025 through June 2026. Broken down by quarter, the picture flips.
Model Y SUVs carrying paying passengers covered around 1.1 million miles in the first quarter, then about 700,000 in the second — roughly a 36% quarter-over-quarter slide. That decline runs counter to Tesla's push to go "balls to the wall for autonomy," as Musk put it in 2024.
The network now spans six cities in Texas and Florida. Tesla also appears to count paid miles in the San Francisco Bay Area as part of "Robotaxi coverage," even though those branded vehicles lack California permits for autonomous operation and still use a safety driver.
Why are Tesla's robotaxis scaling more slowly than expected?
On Wednesday's earnings call, Musk said the company needs to "accumulate driving data that is specific to the Cybercab" — Tesla's gold, purpose-built two-seater — before deploying large numbers of them. Unlike Model 3 and Model Y fleets with millions of vehicles already on the road, Cybercabs lack that volume of chassis-specific miles.
He described calibrating with Cybercabs retrofitted with steering wheels and pedals first, then ramping city deployments as confidence grows. That stance marks a shift from years of claims that Tesla's nearly 10 million customer cars were already quietly collecting the data needed to train future robotaxis.
For more on autonomy and AI transport bets, see BlasterPost's Future Tech & AI Wonders hub.
What are executives saying about safety and growth next?
Musk said ambitious Robotaxi goals still require caution to avoid accidents or harm. He argued that injuring even one person would draw worldwide headlines and a regulatory clampdown, unlike the tens of thousands of U.S. automotive deaths that rarely make news.
Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla's VP of AI, said Robotaxis logged "zero notable incidents" across "more than 380,000 miles" without a safety operator onboard, without defining "notable." Tesla has reported 22 crashes to NHTSA in the year since Robotaxi trials began; most involve other cars hitting Teslas, though three were tied to teleoperators moving vehicles remotely, plus low-speed impacts with curbs, poles, and a tow truck bed.
Elluswamy also argued camera-only autonomy can be safe and affordable without lidar or radar. Both he and Musk pledged growth ahead, noting unsupervised miles have risen roughly 10% every week since unsupervised rides began late last year. "We'll continue to scale, I think, very, very rapidly," Musk said.