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Records from the California Department of Motor Vehicles revealed that Tesla did not log any autonomous driving test miles on public roads in California during 2025, marking the sixth consecutive year with no officially reported self-driving test activity in the state.

This comes despite repeated statements by Elon Musk claiming that Tesla’s long-promised robotaxi service would launch soon, pending regulatory approval, according to Reuters.

Under California’s regulatory framework, logging autonomous test miles is a mandatory prerequisite for robotaxi deployment. Companies are required to complete tens of thousands of miles with a human safety driver before qualifying for fully driverless testing permits.

By contrast, Waymo, owned by Alphabet, logged more than 13 million test miles over the past decade before receiving authorization to operate a full-scale robotaxi fleet.

Tesla, currently valued at approximately $1.5 trillion, has long relied on investor expectations surrounding large-scale robotaxi deployment and recurring revenue from autonomous driving software subscriptions. California—Tesla’s largest U.S. market—remains central to these ambitions.

At present, Tesla operates a limited pilot service in Austin, where regulatory requirements are less restrictive. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the company has launched a service branded as a “robotaxi,” though it functions as a ride service driven by human operators using Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software, which does not meet California’s definition of autonomous driving.

Regulatory guidelines require Tesla to log at least 50,000 autonomous miles with a safety driver before applying for an unmanned testing permit. Since 2016, the company has recorded only 562 official miles—and none since 2019—highlighting a significant gap between public promises and regulatory progress.