FSD & Autopilot

WeRide has completed Slovakia's first autonomous robotaxi test drive, using its lidar-equipped Robotaxi GXR on a closed circuit with a safety driver aboard. Slovakia's Ministry of Transport has written a framework allowing testing with no driver at the wheel, which no other EU state has matched, while Tesla's FSD still awaits EU approval.

A Robotaxi Model Y with nobody in the driver's seat stopped for a row of plastic lane bollards in Austin, then pushed through them and kept going. It happened four weeks after Tesla's VP of AI told investors the programme had an 'impeccable' record with zero notable incidents over 380,000 driverless miles.

A San Francisco Chronicle report finds Tesla owners handing over almost all of their driving to FSD Supervised, including an Uber driver whose safety score went from 70% to 98% on it. Tesla has been deliberately reducing driver-monitoring prompts since FSD v14.3.3, tying the reduction to safety data. Europe is approving the same software on the assumption the driver stays in charge.

Ron DeSantis rode Tesla's control-free Cybercab through scripted hazards at SunTrax, Florida's state-owned autonomous-vehicle proving ground, on 11 August 2026. The venue matters more than the endorsement: Florida already lets a car with no steering wheel carry passengers on public roads with nobody inside.

Zoox has published the framework behind the first US robotaxi cleared to charge passengers without a steering wheel or pedals, after an NHTSA exemption granted on 31 July 2026 that permits up to 2,500 vehicles a year until 2028. With no controls, supervised-mile testing was impossible, so validation rests on simulation and roughly 3 million miles of data benchmarked against US crash statistics. It is self-certified and landed three weeks after a fleet-wide recall — and it previews what Tesla's Cybercab will have to demonstrate.

The California Public Utilities Commission has cleared Waymo to charge for fully driverless rides across 18 counties from Sonoma to San Diego, opening Sacramento and San Diego as new markets. Waymo runs around 3,000 vehicles and has passed 20 million trips. Tesla, in the same week, was capped at 10 robotaxis in Nevada.

The Nevada Transportation Authority has granted Tesla Robotaxi, LLC its operating permit, but capped the fleet at 10 vehicles against the 5,000 Tesla requested, confined it to a Las Vegas Strip geofence, barred roads above 45 mph and required human supervision on board.

At Y Combinator's Startup School, Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov argued that camera-only sensing tops out below the reliability unsupervised driving requires, invoking the "problem of nines" and showing a Waymo driving home on lidar and radar with an obstructed windshield. Waymo has over 220 million fully autonomous miles and claims 94% fewer serious-injury crashes than human drivers in the same areas.

A Model 3 owner has become the first person to pass 25,000 miles of FSD (Supervised) without touching the wheel or the brake, and his car threw on-screen confetti to mark it. It is a striking number — and it is one driver's route mix, not a fleet safety statistic.

The Dutch-led collective claim for European Tesla owners left behind on Hardware 3 has grown to nearly 8,000 verified participants across 39 countries, representing €15.5 million in FSD purchases.

Waymo has shown the interior of the Ojai, its sixth-generation robotaxi built with Zeekr. A tri-screen layout adapts to which seats are occupied, a Calm Mode strips the display back to the essentials, and Google's Gemini handles climate and questions — but never the route.

Fleet operator Moove has raised a $250 million Series C at a $2.1 billion valuation, led by Mubadala with Woven Capital and Ion Pacific, to build robotics-first depots it calls Nests for the autonomous fleets it already runs with Waymo.

The US Insurance Institute for Highway Safety analysed roughly 80 million kilometres of driverless Waymo operation across four cities and found 68% fewer crashes than human drivers on the same roads. Injury crashes were 81% lower. The result varied sharply by city, and the authors are explicit about the data's limits.

Transport for London issued private hire vehicle licences on 5 August 2026 to 15 electric Ford Mustang Mach-E cars running Wayve's autonomous software, completing the 'triple lock' that London requires for private-hire trips. A licensed safety driver stays on board, and invitations go out to selected passengers from Uber's 100,000-strong interest list later this summer.

Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy has called a manual FSD speed ceiling "an anti pattern" and confirmed the setting is not coming back, saying the system will instead learn each driver's implied pace.

Tesla has begun emailing owners in Europe's five FSD-approved countries a free two-month Full Self-Driving (Supervised) trial running to 2 October, the second such giveaway in the region since spring.

Germany's KBA has granted Chinese autonomous driving firm Momenta a nationwide permit for Level 4 test drives on urban roads — the first such Germany-wide approval for a Chinese company, and a route Tesla has not yet secured for its own robotaxi ambitions in Europe.

A former manager of Tesla's Houston FSD testing operation has sued the company, alleging he was fired after escalating concerns that chronic understaffing left test vehicles as 'rolling hazards on public streets'.

Tesla Europe says FSD Supervised has been 5.2x safer than manual driving over 65 million km in five EU countries in four months — its own, un-audited numbers, published as regulators keep scrutinising the system.

Tesla launched unsupervised Model Y robotaxis in Tampa and Orlando on 21 July, less than three weeks after its Miami debut. At its Q2 earnings call the company said the network has now driven more than 380,000 unsupervised miles with no notable incidents, though the Austin fleet reportedly remains small.

On Tesla's Q2 2026 earnings call, Elon Musk gave no concrete plan to upgrade Hardware 3 cars for its latest Full Self-Driving software, leaving millions of owners who were promised self-driving without a clear path.

France's transport minister says Tesla FSD (Supervised) cannot be approved as it currently stands, flagging that it speeds by design and does not keep drivers attentive enough in cities. Rather than follow the Netherlands' national approval, France wants a single EU-wide sign-off.

US safety regulator NHTSA has formally demanded an internal Tesla document titled 'Radar Saves Us' as part of its engineering analysis into Full Self-Driving crashes in reduced visibility. The probe now points directly at Tesla's decision to remove radar from its cars.

New NHTSA filings show a Tesla remote operator — not the autonomous system — drove a Robotaxi Model Y into a hidden tree stump in Houston at 2 mph. It is the third teleoperator-caused crash Tesla has reported and the first it has formally coded as remote operation.