The big picture: Tesla CEO Elon Musk has long promised that autonomous vehicle owners could one day lend their cars to the company’s robotaxi fleet to earn passive income. However, Tesla’s schedule has so far remained vague. Although the company is making real progress on its self-driving ambitions, its latest forecast may be just the latest in Musk’s long line of exaggerated predictions.
During Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call on October 21, Ashok Elluswamy, vice president of autonomous driving, announced the company’s goal of allowing some Model Y owners to add their vehicles to Robotaxi’s autonomous fleet around the second quarter of 2027. The feature, which would allow users to make money from ridesharing, has long been one of CEO Elon Musk’s core promises.
Several years have passed since Musk first stated that Tesla owners would one day be able to program their autonomous vehicles to check for fares when they are not in use. This is possible because the software that powers the company’s fully autonomous cybercabs can also run on the Model Y, which will receive it with the release of V15. However, the vehicles would also have to be integrated into Tesla’s geofenced operating areas and fleet management system before they could join the robotaxi service.
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 21, 2026
Entrepreneurs could potentially start small ride-sharing companies using private fleets of Teslas or Cybercabs. However, the company’s history with deadlines suggests that this vision, if it becomes a reality, will likely happen much later than the second quarter of 2027.
Musk originally estimated there would be a million robotaxis on the road by 2020, but Tesla didn’t launch the service until the summer of 2025, when a small number of vehicles began operating in parts of Austin. While the cars drove themselves, the company still hired human observers to accompany the drivers in case something went wrong.
Since then, these vehicles have recorded more accidents per mile than typical human drivers. The root cause may lie in what has allowed Tesla to deploy its cars more cheaply than rivals like Waymo: self-driving software that uses only vision to scan its surroundings. In contrast, Waymo and Zoox also use radar and lidar for better range and accuracy.
Tesla currently operates several hundred robotaxis in Texas and Florida, some of which still have human supervisors. Musk attributes the slower-than-expected rollout to major security precautions.
Although the company has been battling to distribute fully autonomous taxis in the U.S. for longer than expected, customer interest is increasing. More than three-quarters of new Tesla buyers in North America opted for fully autonomous (monitored) driving in the last quarter.
