monitor in the car.” Tesla’s stock immediately jumped over 4% on the news. Headlines across the financial press celebrated the milestone.
There’s just one problem: it appears to be another game of smoke and mirrors. The Robotaxi cars spotted without “safety monitor” were all being followed by a trailing black Tesla supervising the “driverless” Robotaxi.
That headline definitely made me laugh, but it also says a lot about Tesla’s approach. They move fast, sometimes too fast, and let real-world usage expose flaws instead of overengineering upfront. Removing safety monitors feels risky from the outside, yet it fits their pattern of betting on data and iteration. Investors either see that as bold innovation or unnecessary risk, depending on tolerance for surprises.
Tesla filed new comments with the California Public Utilities Commission that amount to a quiet admission: its “Robotaxi” service still relies on both in-car human drivers and domestic remote operators to function. Rather than downplaying these dependencies, Tesla leans into them — arguing that its multi-layered human supervision model is more reliable than Waymo’s fully driverless system, pointing to the December 2025 San Francisco blackout as proof.