Musk says that Tesla’s self -driving tests will be geopholid to ‘the safest’ parts of Austin | Techcrunch

The first test of Tesla’s long promised robotaxi service in Austin, Texas next month will initially be limited to specific areas that the company regards ‘the safest’, CEO Elon Musk told CNBC in An interview Tuesday.

Tesla’s cars are ‘not taking intersections unless we are very confident [they’re] Will it do well with that intersection, or it will just take a route around that intersection, “said Musk.” We will be extremely paranoid about the bet as we should be. It would be foolish not to be. ‘

The use of a geofence represents an important strategy shift for Musk, who for years claimed that his company could create a self -driving solution for general purposes that can be submitted at any location and can work without human supervision. (Geofence is a jargonterm that is used in the autonomous vehicle industry, which means that the vehicle is limited to a certain area.) Musk has claimed that Tesla will try to launch similar tests for his robotaxi service in California and possibly later this year.

Musk telegraphed the idea to use a geofence on Tesla’s first quarter of call in April, although he did not explicitly say that this was the approach that the company would use. The CEO said at the time that it was “more and more likely that there will be a localized parameter set” for his early robotaxi operations.

As part of the “paranoid” approach of Tesla, Musk said on Tuesday that the company remotely will check the first fleet of around 10 model Y SUVs that are equipped with the “without supervision” version of his full self -driving software. Musk also claimed that those vehicles will enter without a security operator.

“I think it is wise for us to start with a small number, to confirm that things are going well and then sharpening it in relation to how well we see it,” he said.

It is common for autonomous vehicle companies such as Waymo to man an operational center of people who keep an eye on their robotaxis and, if necessary, offer remote guidelines. Waymo, which placed a blog on the subject in 2024However, does not take control of the vehicles. Instead, human employees mainly communicate through questions and answers with the self -driving system to give it the right context and to solve the problem.