Tesla announced that its Robotaxi fleet has covered 1.6 million kilometers without a safety driver. Ashok Elluswamy announced that 1 million kilometers had been added over the past six weeks to the 610,000 kilometers reported at the second-quarter financial results meeting on July 22.
The company first moved the safety drivers initially present in the vehicles to follow vehicles and then deactivated them entirely. Tesla defines “unsupervised” driving as trips in which all sensing and control processes are handled by the vehicle’s software.
Why it matters
This development shows that human oversight is being gradually reduced in the operation of vehicles within the Robotaxi program. The removal of safety drivers first to follow vehicles and then entirely means that the reported kilometers should not be regarded solely as assisted-driving experiences. The increase recorded over the past six weeks shows that the company has implemented this form of driving across its fleet on a broader scale. However, Tesla’s definition of unsupervised driving indicates that the measurement is limited to trips in which the vehicles’ sensing and control processes are left entirely to software; therefore, the stated kilometers represent the total usage that meets this definition rather than the conditions under which the system operates.
Background
Tesla is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we have published 3 news articles mentioning the name in the past 90 days; the latest is dated September 3, 2026.