Tesla Robotaxis have crashed at the least twice since July 2025 whereas a teleoperator was remotely driving the autos, in response to newly unredacted info submitted to the Nationwide Freeway Site visitors Security Administration (NHTSA).
Each crashes occurred in Austin, Texas, and occurred at low speeds. In every case, there was a security monitor behind the wheel and no passengers have been onboard.
The brand new info comes just some months after Tesla told lawmakers that it permits distant operators to pilot one of many firm’s autos so long as they keep underneath 10 miles per hour. “This functionality allows Tesla to promptly transfer a car which may be in a compromising place, thereby mitigating the necessity to look forward to a primary responder or Tesla discipline consultant to manually get better the car,” the corporate mentioned on the time.
Tesla, like different corporations engaged on autonomous car expertise, is required to submit detailed details about any crashes to the NHTSA. Not like most of these different corporations, although, Tesla had at all times redacted the descriptions of its crashes, claiming they have been confidential enterprise info.
It’s not clear why, however Tesla modified course this week, and the newest model of the information launched by the NHTSA now supplies a story description for all 17 crashes Tesla has recorded since final yr with its nascent Robotaxi community.
In July 2025, shortly after Tesla first began working the community in Austin, the corporate’s automated driving system (ADS) apparently had bother transferring ahead whereas stopped on a road. The protection monitor requested assist from Tesla’s distant help workforce, and a teleoperator “took over car management and regularly elevated car velocity and turned the Tesla ADS left towards the left facet of the road.”
The teleoperator then drove “up the curb and made contact with a steel fence.”
An analogous sequence performed out in January 2026. The Tesla ADS was driving the car straight on a road, when the protection monitor “requested help to help with car navigation.”
“The teleoperator took over car management when the ADS was stopped and proceeded straight on the road. The Tesla car made contact with a brief barricade for a building website at roughly 9MPH, scraping the front-left fender and tire,” in response to the information submitted to the NHTSA.
Much like different autonomous car corporations like Waymo, many of the different newly unredacted crashes contain Tesla Robotaxi autos being crashed into as a substitute of inflicting crashes.
However at the least two of them contain a Tesla Robotaxi clipping its mirrors on different autos. In a single crash, from September 2025, the Tesla ADS was unable to keep away from hitting a canine that bumped into the road. (Tesla reported the canine was in a position to run away.)
In one other September 2025 crash, a Tesla Robotaxi made an unprotected left flip right into a parking zone and ran right into a steel chain. (The NHTSA just lately closed an investigation into the occasional tendency of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software program to crash into parking zone bollards, chains, and gates. Waymo additionally issued a recall final yr associated to a similar problem.)
Whereas different robotaxi corporations like Waymo and Zoox have reported extra crashes than Tesla, Elon Musk’s firm is working at a fraction of the size. The main points that have been revealed this week within the newly unredacted information could assist clarify why Tesla is scaling up its nascent autonomous ride-hailing community so slowly. Musk himself admitted last month that “ensuring issues are utterly protected” is the most important limiting issue to Tesla increasing the community, saying the corporate is being “very cautious.”
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