Elon Musk Made Tesla Fans Think Unsupervised Robotaxis Had Arrived. They Can’t Find Them

“Just started driving a Tesla robotaxi in Austin with no safety monitors in the car,” Elon Musk wrote on X last Thursday. That post was embedded with a second post from Tesla enthusiast account @TSLA99T saying “I’m in a robotaxi with no safety monitors,” in a video showing the interior of a Tesla stopped at a red light. There was no one in the driver’s seat and the video was taken from the back seat. The video seems to prove that what Elon Musk was saying is true: Tesla robotaxis are now truly driverless, like Waymo rides.

Ashok Eluswamy, Tesla’s vice president of software, also posted on January 22 that Tesla was “starting with some unsupervised vehicles mixed in with a broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors.”

Since that day, small fish Tesla fans have posted on X about the hope of finding unsupervised Tesla robotaxis. And it’s possible that the unsupervised rides are happening anonymously to paying customers, but it looks like the company is offering preview rides to extremely loyal Tesla influencers, and perhaps with a human-driven Tesla right behind the robotaxi every step of the way.

For example, ever since unsupervised rides were announced, Tesla influencer David Moss, notable for claiming (with some anecdotal evidence) that he traveled coast-to-coast in a Tesla without touching the steering wheel, has been hard at work trying to find one.

42 Tesla Robotaxi Ride
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1 Goal: Finding an untrained model Y

It’s hard to get a ride on the app and every time I ride I see legitimately 4-5 cars mapping the area that could be on the app.

This was my 5th consecutive trip with the supervisor among the drivers… pic.twitter.com/fxAvY4dWrx

– David Moss (@DavidMoss) 28 January 2026

According to an Tesla moved these handlers from the passenger seat to the driver’s seat in September.

It is unclear whether TSLA99T was claiming to have received an unsupervised Tesla robotaxi ride as a paying customer. On the same day as the TSLA99T ride, Joe Tegtmeyer—a well-known Tesla ultra-obsessed—also rode in one of these “unsupervised” Teslas, but he revealed that it was actually monitored by a pursuit car. This would certainly be a cumbersome way to run an app-based robotaxi operation.

According to Electrek (who first reported on this story), Tesla stock rose 4% on the news of the unsupervised robotaxis. Some headlines also seem to have taken advantage of this, giving the impression that driverless rides are indeed available to the public.

But, as Gizmodo wrote the day after Musk’s announcement, it appears that the rare “chase car” version of the unsupervised robotaxi could theoretically be the only version of an unsupervised Tesla robotaxi currently on the road, but paying customers can’t access them anyway.

At the time of writing on Wednesday night, Moss was claiming to have taken 54 unsuccessful robotaxi rides in one unsupervised ride.

54 wasn’t my magic number because I had to take one more ride in the Tesla robotaxi before I could sleep pic.twitter.com/rgEMIXRbig

– David Moss (@DavidMoss) 29 January 2026

On a Tesla earnings call, which took place while Moss was still on his quest, Elon Musk mentioned unsupervised driving as testing taking place in multiple cities, and that he and his company are “really going crazy about the safety.”

Gizmodo contacted Tesla for information on whether any unsupervised rides were offered to paying customers, and whether any such rides included a pursuit car. We’ll update if we hear back.