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Comment by ethan_smith | Hacker News Reader

The gap between promise and delivery isn't just about technical challenges but also regulatory hurdles - no major jurisdiction has approved fully driverless commercial robotaxi services without significant restrictions.

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It's playing to Elon's narrative to even mention regulatory hurdles when it's clear they aren't technically there either. He'd love if they were banned because FSD is still completely unreliable and his 10 robotaxis have already had many documented issues. Unfortunately hard to keep his story with waymo running actual Robotaxis with no employees in them.

Tesla is having exactly the same regulatory hurdles on Robotaxi deployment as me. In both cases they are nonexistent. And we both don't have the technology necessary for running a Robotaxi service.

Tesla knows that damn well. That's why they did NOT even try to apply for any driverless commercial robotaxi service license. But hey, it's a nice plausible argument.

Here a recent story about a similar argument: https://electrek.co/2025/07/11/elon-musk-tesla-robotaxi-is-c...

Relevant quotes:

"The CEO also said that Tesla will bring Robotaxi to the Bay Area in California with “a month or two” and that the company is just waiting for “regulatory approvals”:"

" The CA DMV said that Tesla has yet to apply for those permits as of Thursday, July 10:

“To date, Tesla has not applied for either a driverless testing or deployment permit.”"

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