Is the robotaxi revolution ever coming?

Earlier in April, Tesla announced the expansion of its robotaxi service to Dallas and Houston. During the company’s first-quarter earnings call, Elon Musk said he hoped to have robotaxis and driverless vehicles in “a dozen or so” states by the end of the year. And just last week, Tesla added five more “unsupervised” robotaxis to its Texas markets.

That timeline is a bit more modest than some of Musk’s earlier predictions about Tesla’s Robotaxi program. In the past, he’s suggested that coverage could expand to half the population of the U.S. by the end of 2025.

For more on this, “Marketplace Morning Report” host Sabri Ben-Achour spoke with Kirsten Korosec, transportation editor at TechCrunch. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Sabri Ben-Achour: How widespread are Tesla's driverless vehicles right now?

Kirsten Korosec: Not widespread at all. They are in Austin, and there are a little bit more than a dozen that are considered to be actively in service. And they did just roll out in Dallas and Houston. But those two, you really need to put a little asterisk next to because — as far as I can see on my end — it's incredibly limited. Just a couple of vehicles in both of these cities.

Ben-Achour: What has made the general rollout of driverless taxis slower than some people might have expected or hoped?

Korosec: There is a number of reasons why. There's the technical reasons, right? And then there's the regulatory hoops that all of these companies have had to jump through. And then there's the hard part of just operating these things.

Ben-Achour: What is the biggest technical hurdle still remaining, do you think?

Korosec: When I've talked to engineers, they sort of sum it up as, “We've solved 99.999% of ‘full self-driving.’ And it's that very last fraction in which sometimes the vehicle doesn't operate as it should. There's also, I think, just this interesting phenomenon about how we accept, as a society, people dying in car crashes — around 45,000 or so a year. But I think that the level of acceptance of a single autonomous vehicle, potentially killing someone or being involved in a fatal car crash or even injuring someone, is very, very low. And so, the bar is high.

Ben-Achour: How big is the regulatory hurdle facing these companies?

Korosec: It's dependent on the state. So, if you're in the state of California and you want to operate a robotaxi service, you have to go through two agencies and have multiple different permits. You want to do that in Arizona? It's a very different process and much faster. If we get a federal framework, I think that can be very helpful and actually encourage the disbursement of this technology in a more clear way. But right now, you see these pockets or heavy hubs of activity.

Ben-Achour: Do you see a future where autonomous vehicles are commonplace and everywhere?

Korosec: I think that in certain cities it will absolutely be everywhere. But are we going to see robotaxis in middle America or in smaller towns? I don't think so, certainly not anytime soon.