By Abhirup Roy
(Reuters) -Tesla has yet to apply for regulatory permits it needs to operate driverless taxis in California, two state regulators said on Thursday, a day after CEO Elon Musk said the company would expand its robotaxis to the San Francisco Bay Area within two months.
“To date, Tesla has not applied for either a driverless testing or deployment permit,” a spokesperson for California’s Department of Motor Vehicles said in an email to Reuters on Thursday.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which in March issued the first in a series of permits Tesla requires, said on Thursday the company had not yet applied for any new permits.
All it has so far is a transportation charter-party carrier permit (TCP) typically associated with chauffeur-operated services, which allows Tesla to own and control a fleet of vehicles and transport employees on pre-arranged trips.
The successful expansion of robotaxis will be crucial to Tesla’s future as sales of its aging lineup of electric vehicles have slumped with rising competition and a backlash against Musk’s embrace of far-right political views.
Much of the company’s trillion-dollar valuation hangs on Musk’s bet on robotaxis and humanoid robots that are powered by artificial intelligence.
Tesla reached out to Arizona late last month to start a certification process for an autonomous vehicle ride-sharing service, and a decision is expected by the end of this month, the state’s transportation department said on Thursday.
“They have expressed interest in operating within the Phoenix Metro area,” Arizona’s Department of Transportation said in an email to Reuters.
Tesla has applied to test and operate both with and without a driver, it said.
Tesla shares, down 23% this year, closed up nearly 5% on Thursday. Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.
Tesla last month rolled out a small test of its robotaxi service in a limited area of Austin, Texas, with about a dozen vehicles, a select group of passengers and many restrictions, including a safety monitor in the front passenger seat.
Even as social media videos showed multiple traffic problems and driving issues over the first few days, CEO Elon Musk said in response to a post on his social media platform X on Wednesday that Tesla would expand the service to a larger area in the city this weekend.
When another user on X asked about an expansion to the Bay Area, Musk replied, “Waiting on regulatory approvals, but probably in a month or two.”
While Tesla faced almost no regulation in Texas, California tightly controls where and how firms can operate autonomous vehicles and requires testing data for permits.
The California regulators Reuters contacted did not say how long it would take to review a permit application.
(Reporting by Abhirup Roy in San Francisco and Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Pooja Desai, Chris Reese, Deepa Babington and Sonali Paul)
