Tesla Analyst Believes Tesla Will Launch Uber Competitor

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Adam Jonas, the Managing Director for Global Auto and Shared Mobility with Morgan Stanley, released a note earlier this month about Tesla’s future Robotaxi service and some possible expectations for its upcoming Robotaxi event on Thursday.

Let’s take a look at what he has to say about Tesla.

Robotaxi Event

Jonas predicts that Tesla’s event will serve as a showcase for the Cybercab, showing off its capabilities and design features. Attendees will be shown and given rides in the Tesla Robotaxi at the event, which will provide a set of baseline expectations for Tesla’s future service.

Dual Approach

However, he predicts Tesla will roll out Robotaxi in a two-pronged approach. In his eyes, Tesla will offer a fully autonomous app-based robotaxi/Cybercab service, but it will also offer a second option, a “supervised” autonomous/FSD-based rideshare service. He believes that the second item here—the rideshare service—is the biggest one that will impact investors. This human-powered fleet will essentially be an Uber competitor, which raked in 10 billion dollars in revenue last quarter.

Targeting

Jonas breaks down Tesla’s approach to rolling out Robotaxi and Unsupervised FSD in the future. As we previously discussed in an article on Tesla’s future, Tesla will likely target urban and metro areas for its initial rollout of Cybercab. Other areas may receive service from the supervised rideshare service.

Jonas estimates the FSD take rate will approach 30% this year with the now lower prices. Tesla may choose to keep the FSD price low to continue the high adoption of the service. This will help Tesla build out its human-based network faster until it can achieve a fully autonomous fleet that will work anywhere.

Morgan Stanley also believes Tesla will offer more favorable rates than Uber and its competitors, leaving more money in the driver’s pocket while Tesla grows its rideshare community.

Uber

Uber will be a direct competitor to Tesla’s in-house rideshare service, and Teslas likely account for approximately 5-9% of all Uber trips today. Tesla will have to ensure that its new owners who intend to do ridesharing will switch to Tesla’s service rather than continue with Uber’s well-established taxi service.

We’ll see how the future rollout of Tesla’s Unsupervised FSD and Robotaxi goes on 10/10, which is just a few days away. Be sure to check out our article on what to expect at Tesla’s event.

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NHTSA to Streamline Approvals for Control-Free Vehicles Like Tesla’s Cybercab

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In a letter to industry, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced that it is overhauling its approvals process for vehicles designed without human controls.

The change addresses a regulatory bottleneck that has slowed down American companies like Tesla from deploying purpose-built Robotaxis, rather than relying on using traditional vehicles with steering wheels and pedals. The policy shift is outlined in a letter posted to the NHTSA’s website, which you can find here.

Reducing Approvals From Years to Months

Under the existing rules today, any vehicle that is built without a steering wheel or brake pedals must receive a special exemption from federal safety standards.

Obtaining exemptions for a particular vehicle was a time-consuming process for both the companies requesting exemptions and the NHTSA. The process was often a black box—nobody knew when an exemption might be granted, and approvals could take years.

The NHTSA, under the new administration’s guidelines for autonomous vehicle development, is now committed to streamlining this process. The agency will be implementing a new, faster approach immediately for receiving exemptions for autonomous vehicles without standard controls. The NHTSA expects decisions on exemption requests to be determined within months rather than years. 

Accelerating the Cybercab

This change has massive implications for Tesla, which is banking on the production of the simplified and easy-to-maintain purpose-built Cybercab. The Cybercab is developed from the ground up as an autonomous Robotaxi and will be one of the key beneficiaries of this move by the NHTSA.

Knowing that a final design won't be caught in a multi-year regulatory limbo provides a level of certainty that has been missing. It allows Tesla to confidently plan the manufacturing, development, and deployment processes without worrying whether the project will get stuck in regulatory approvals.

According to the letter, the agency will publish its improved instructions for the streamlined process "shortly." With Tesla already having begun Cybercab pre-production and the goals for its deployment as soon as late 2026, there’s still a lot to be done to make autonomy a part of Tesla’s new sustainable abundance mission statement.

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You Can Now Track Tesla’s Robotaxi Deployment

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Thanks to Tesla Yoda on X, we have found out that Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet is registered on the Texas Department of Transportation’s public-facing Automated Vehicle Deployment website. This makes the fleet’s movements publicly viewable and trackable, and marks a first for Tesla.

This isn’t just any old FSD test - this is the first officially acknowledged, government-tracked, and sanctioned deployment of a Tesla Model Y operating as a ride-share vehicle. But that’s not all - Texas DOT’s tracker notes that the Tesla does not have a safety driver.

View on the Map

Visitors to the Texas DOT website can filter for “Tesla”, and see, currently, a single active vehicle operating in the Austin Metro area. According to the state’s official data, here’s what we know:

Company: Tesla

Description: Ride-share service

Status in Texas: Testing

Safety Driver: No

The final point is definitely the most interesting here. While Tesla has been testing FSD with safety drivers for some time in Austin and LA for employee-only testing, this is the first time that a vehicle has been officially registered and deployed on public roads without a human behind the wheel for safety. 

The fact that there is no safety driver officially shifts the liability from the occupant of the driver’s seat to Tesla, for the first time in a public setting. That’s already pretty significant - we previously dove into how Tesla plans to insure its own vehicles, and potentially owner vehicles in the Robotaxi fleets. 

The status currently lists Tesla as “Testing,” confirming that the service isn’t available to the public, but this is expected to change in the coming weeks.

This testing phase is likely part of a short but crucial period that lets Tesla capture data on the safety levels of its current iteration of Unsupervised FSD without a driver supervising. Tesla already stated that they’d be avoiding difficult areas, so this testing can also expose additional areas Tesla may want to avoid, such as school zones or blind driveways.

Tesla will need to prove, both internally and externally, that FSD Unsupervised has the necessary performance to safely navigate the streets without any incidents.

Regulatory Milestone

For years, the concept of a Tesla Robotaxi has been a future promise. Now, it's a present-day reality, albeit in a testing capacity.

Having an official government body list a Tesla as an active, driverless vehicle shows that they’ve been able to clear regulatory hurdles, which Tesla has often pointed to as the issue. It demonstrates a level of confidence from both Tesla and Texas regulators in the system's capabilities.

While it's just a single vehicle for today, we’ll likely see this list slowly expand over time. Alongside being able to track Robotaxi incidents at the City of Austin’s website, we’ll be able to closely watch Tesla’s progress with its first Robotaxi deployments.

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