Tesla's retrofitted Model Y robotaxis are already operating on public roads with early builds of Full Self-Driving software version 15, the company disclosed during its Q2 earnings call on Wednesday2.
Tesla AI Chief Ashok Elluswamy said the Robotaxi fleet is running early FSD v15 builds that incorporate roughly 40% of the planned improvements over v14, with internal benchmarks meeting their objectives. "As we continue to complete our work on v15, we will see that the car is going to be ridiculously safe and capable".
Elluswamy also provided fleet-wide metrics, stating that "the Robotaxi program has been operating extremely well, especially in terms of safety. The program has had an impeccable safety record. We have driven more than 380,000 mi of unsupervised Robotaxi, now across six cities in two different states".
FSD v15 is being developed across seven major improvement tracks over v14, all in parallel. The full version is slated to launch publicly later this year or early next year. Tesla has indicated it would wait for FSD v15 before ramping Robotaxi expansion into new cities.
The company launched unsupervised Robotaxi rides in Miami, Orlando, and Tampa this month. The Model Y robotaxis use standard Hardware 4 (HW4/AI4) suites, with Project Halo communications units and a dedicated rear-camera washer as the only notable hardware upgrades.
Separately, FSD v14 Lite started rolling out publicly this week. Tesla has said HW3 vehicles will not be able to achieve unsupervised autonomy, and the company previously confirmed that FSD v15 will run on HW4 vehicles. FSD v15 is expected to bring 10x more parameters than current FSD builds.
ANALYSIS The disclosure that early v15 builds are already running on the live Robotaxi fleet — rather than confined to internal testing — compresses the timeline between development and deployment. With 40% of planned improvements already integrated and benchmarks reportedly met, the gap between the current fleet software and the full v15 release appears narrower than the "later this year or early next year" public launch window might suggest.
Tesla's decision to tie geographic expansion to v15 readiness means the six-city, two-state footprint is likely to hold steady until the full software version ships.
The hardware standardization around HW4 with minimal physical modifications positions the Robotaxi fleet closer to consumer-grade vehicles than purpose-built autonomous platforms, which has implications for how quickly Tesla could scale supply if the software clears regulatory and performance thresholds.