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Investing.com-- Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) will expand its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, to cover a greater portion of the city this weekend, CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday.
Musk later said that the electric vehicle maker was seeking regulatory approvals for its robotaxi services in the San Francisco Bay Area, and will launch the service "probably in a month or two."
Musk’s comments were made in response to an X post on the robotaxi service, which was rolled out in Austin on June 22.
The service is still touted as a test by Tesla, and while no human is in the driver’s seat, each car has a Tesla employee in the front passenger seat to stop the car in the event of any safety concerns.
Tesla has so far provided few cues on how the service has been performing. Social media posts showed several instances of the robotaxis appearing to drive rashly or break traffic laws, although these could not be independently verified.
Autonomous driving has been long touted by Musk as the next great driver of Tesla’s earnings, especially as the electric vehicle maker grapples with over a year of steadily declining sales.
Separately, Musk is also gearing up to launch a new version of Grok, the flagship artificial intelligence of his start-up xAI. Grok’s launch comes after a recent controversy involving allegedly anti-semitic, pro-Nazi comments made by the AI on the X social media platform, which Musk also owns.