Tesla plans to expand its robotaxi zone to California and Arizona. Why it matters.

Electric car maker Tesla, which last month held  a limitedlaunch of its robotaxi service in Texas, is about to take its drones onto the roads of two more states. The company has begun certifying robotaxis in Arizona and California. Investors reacted positively to the news, with shares jumping nearly 5% in Thursday trading.

The San Francisco Bay Area robot cab service could launch "probably in a month or two" - subject to regulatory approval, Tesla CEO Ilon Musk wrote on social network X. The company has also contacted the Arizona Department of Transportation to begin the process of certifying the service, the agency told Bloomberg. It has applied to test and operate both with and without a driver, the report said.

Tesla requested a passenger transportation permit from California regulators as early as late last year, wrote Bloomberg in February.

In addition, as early as the weekend of July 12-13, the company will expand its service area in the Texas capital of Austin, where robotaxis have been running for several weeks, Musk said.

Tesla investors reacted optimistically to the announcements, with shares soaring 4.7% in trading on July 10.

Wall Street has high hopes for the robotaxi project, which could face regulatory hurdles, technical difficulties and risks on the roads. U.S. traffic safety authorities have already said they are looking into cases in which Tesla's unmanned cars appeared to violate traffic laws on their first day of operation in Austin.

Although only a few Model Y cars participated in the Texas launch, Musk promised that within a few months the company will increase the fleet to a thousand, and later introduce a special Cybercab model - without steering wheel and pedals, Bloomberg recalls. The agency notes: if the scaling plans are realized, Tesla could become a serious competitor for both developers of autonomous cabs like Waymo and traditional operators, including Uber.

"The rapid rollout of robotaxis could mark the beginning of Tesla's offensive against existing ride-sharing models, including other operators of robotaxi networks," Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Potter wrote Thursday in a note quoted by Bloomberg. - The faster this process goes (and without major accidents), the better for Tesla stock."

Analysts at RBC Capital Markets this week supported the company, saying the selloff in its shares had gone too far. At the same time, from their point of view, it is long-term projects such as robotaxi and Megapack energy storage systems that could rekindle investor interest in Tesla. 

The company's capitalization has fallen by nearly a quarter this year, with quotes up about 22% over the past three months as market participants waited for the service launch and then welcomed it. 

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor