Tesla’s self-driving Robotaxis have been operating in Austin, Texas, with a safety monitor in the passenger seat, a trained person who can intervene in case anything goes wrong with the autonomous vehicle. On Thursday, CEO Elon Musk announced the monitor would no longer be in the car, which was positioned as a major step forward in the company’s capabilities to operate autonomously without human intervention.
Turns out, it’s not quite that simple. Electrek reported that, based on social media videos, it appears that Tesla hasn’t actually gotten rid of the safety monitor. Instead, the company has seemingly simply moved the person into a trail car that follows the Robotaxi for the duration of its journey. Multiple videos show Robotaxis being tailed by Tesla vehicles, suggesting that Tesla’s autonomous driving may not be as advanced as the company would like it to appear. Tesla, it should be noted, hasn’t confirmed whether or not it is operating trail cars. The company did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication, but it also hasn’t had an operating public relations department in many years.
My first unsupervised @robotaxi ride here in Austin! Come along with me on this 1st experience of driving around Austin with just me in the car and in the back seat!
Congrats to the @Tesla_AI team! 🤠👍 pic.twitter.com/YVJ19zp2qZ
— Joe Tegtmeyer 🚀 🤠🛸😎 (@JoeTegtmeyer) January 22, 2026
In a video uploaded by Tesla enthusiast Joe Tegtmeyer, he can be heard identifying the “chase car” that is following his ride in what he identifies as his “first unsupervised Robotaxi ride.” Tegtmeyer suggests the car is there for “validation,” which seems like a nice way of saying “being on scene in case anything goes horribly wrong.”
In a vacuum, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with the idea of a trail car for safety purposes—though it does seem like a very inefficient way to operate when you are trying to offer rides at scale. But it’s the weaselly way that Musk has presented this change that gives it such a bad taste. Musk said that the Robotaxis are driving “with no safety monitor in the car.” That’s technically correct. But the knowledge that the safety monitor is still involved and in a position to potentially intervene in every single ride undermines the idea that Tesla has achieved some new, meaningful level of autonomy.
The fact that safety monitors are still involved at such a granular level suggests Tesla is still lightyears behind Waymo, which is currently operating a fleet of around 2,500 cars without a human around to intervene physically (though they do still have remote operators who can take over at any point). Tesla, meanwhile, is reportedly operating about 80ish Robotaxis in total, and usually only a handful at the same time.
Despite this, Musk went on stage in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum and claimed that Tesla has solved autonomy. “I think self-driving cars is essentially a solved problem at this point,” he said before claiming that Tesla’s Robotaxis will be “very widespread by the end of this year within the U.S.” If that’s true, get ready for some major traffic jams considering every Tesla Robotaxi ride actually puts two cars on the road: the one getting you to your destination and the one that makes sure you don’t burst into flames.
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