Tesla Robotaxi videos show speeding, driving into wrong lane

Tesla Inc.’s self-driving taxis appeared to violate traffic laws during the company’s first day offering paid rides, with one customer capturing footage of a left turn gone wrong and others traveling in cars that exceeded posted speed limits.

In a video taken by Rob Maurer, an investor who used to host a Tesla podcast, the Model Y he’s riding in enters an Austin intersection in a left-turn-only lane. The Tesla hesitates to make the turn, swerves right and proceeds into an unoccupied lane meant for traffic moving in the opposite direction.

A honking horn can be heard as the Tesla re-enters the correct lane over a double-yellow line, which drivers aren’t supposed to cross.

In two other posts on X, initial riders in driverless Model Ys shared footage of Teslas speeding. A vehicle carrying Sawyer Merritt, a Tesla investor, reached 35 mph shortly after passing a 30-mph speed limit sign, a video he posted shows.

In a separate livestream from Herbert Ong, a YouTuber with more than 123,000 subscribers, he commented that the vehicle was going faster than the posted limit of 35 mph.

“It’s going at 39 right now, which is perfect, right, because I don’t want to drive at 35, and it’s driving at the same flow of traffic,” Ong said. “If everyone else is driving at this speed, you want to be at the same speed.”

Representatives for Tesla, the Austin Police Department and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the videos. The automaker recalled more than 362,000 vehicles in February 2023 after the NHTSA said its driver-assistance system may allow cars to infringe on local traffic laws.

A spokesman for the city of Austin said it hadn’t received any safety incident reports regarding Tesla’s robotaxis over the weekend.

Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk celebrated the start of Tesla’s robotaxi operations on Sunday, congratulating employees for what he said was a successful launch. Wall Street analysts also published broadly positive reports, with Barclays analyst Dan Levy writing that the first day of service was “largely uneventful.”

Tesla shares rose 9.3% as of 1:33 p.m. in New York on Monday after earlier gaining as much as 11%, the biggest intraday jump since April 9.

Another video posted Sunday captured two riders in a driverless Model Y having trouble after pressing a button on the rear screen of the vehicle to indicate that they wanted the vehicle to pull over.

After the YouTuber who goes by Bearded Tesla Guy pressed the button, a message popped up on the screen indicating that the Model Y would find a safe location to pull over. But rather than execute a pull-over maneuver, the vehicle came to a stop in the middle of the road.

After the riders have a brief discussion with a remote customer-support worker who gets the Tesla going again, it took a second conversation with remote support to get the Model Y to route to the riders’ desired drop-off destination.

Trudell and Carlson write for Bloomberg.