Ahead of Tesla's 'We, Robot' event, here's how the public sees Robotaxis

Ahead of Tesla's Robotaxi unveiling event on Thursday, a firm released data suggesting that early consumer experiences with the driverless ride-hailing platform have been generally positive.

On Tuesday, JD Power shared the results of its 2024 US Robotaxi Experience Study, which found that consumers ranked the driverless ride-hailing experience an average of 8.53 out of 10. In its second year, the survey polled 3,773 respondents and 773 consumers. Those who lived in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Dallas, where robotaxi services are already available.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, consumer confidence in robotaxis was almost substantially higher among those who had prior experience in a self-driving vehicle, landing at 76 percent and above 20 percent among those who had not. Consumer confidence also improved through public exposure to the technology, with 34 percent of those who have not ridden but seen self-driving vehicles expressing some trust and acceptance.

Notably, these results suggest that the sheer experience with robotaxi platforms – both being inside them and seeing them on the road – tends to give consumers greater public confidence in these driverless solutions. The findings also come as the market for driverless ride-hailing continues to grow as Tesla and other companies prepare their commercial robotaxi offerings.

The survey featured five categories including comfort and convenience, initiating a ride, taking a ride in a given vehicle, service availability and cost, as well as overall vehicle technology. Responses to the study were fielded in August.

The specialty of FSD Supervised is that it works anywhere in the US and Canada.

No high definition maps, no geofences.

This means you can use it in places no Tesla has ever traveled before

— Tesla AI (@tesla_ai) October 4, 2024

Key findings also included that consumers regularly look for safety features and easy access to authorities, such as the inclusion of an emergency button on Robotoxi. While service area coverage and cost remain barriers for some consumers who have yet to try the services, most companies employ a mapping strategy to specific service areas.

“The robotaxi segment is still anyone's game, with most people unfamiliar with robotaxi brands and not having developed a clear collaborative image,” said Kathleen Rizk, senior director of user experience benchmarking and technology at JD Power.

Other key findings include that consumers strongly value how well vehicles navigate traffic laws and how well they perform when handling regular traffic. Also, 77 percent of rides said they would prefer a driverless robotaxi to a ride-share with a human driver if they needed a personal conversation.

You can view JD Power's full study results for the 2024 Robotaxis Experience Study on the firm's website here.

Currently, driverless ride-hailing services and tests are conducted by Google-owned companies Waymo, May Mobility, Zoox and Motional. Meanwhile, General Motors (GM) subsidiary Cruise was forced to halt self-driving operations after an accident with a pedestrian last fall, though it is currently aiming to resume services by the end of this year.

Although Tesla offers its fully self-driving (FSD) customer supervision, it does not currently have software available to customers as a driverless ride-hailing system. However, the company is expected to unveil a ride-hailing service during its “We, Robot” event on Thursday, and it has already teased a mobile app ride-hailing platform.

The company's FSD is expected to eventually become unsupervised as Tesla aims to make supervised, safer cars safer than human drivers, making it one of the only self-driving software out there that doesn't use area mapping. For that reason, Tesla has touted the ability to scale FSD beyond the mapped-out service area, especially when coupled with ongoing training of its AI neural network via real-time driving footage.