Tesla Robotaxis Are Running FSD V15

Tesla’s next-generation Full Self-Driving software is operating on public roads earlier than anticipated. During the Q2 earnings call on Wednesday, the company said that retrofitted Model Y vehicles providing autonomous rides on the Robotaxi network are already running early builds of FSD v15.

“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.”

“The currently operating Robotaxi fleet is already running early versions of the v15 FSD software,” “As we continue to complete our work on v15, we will see that the car is going to be ridiculously safe and capable.”

Ashok Elluswamy said Tesla targeted seven major improvement tracks over v14 for v15, all advancing in parallel. He explained that the Robotaxi fleet’s early FSD v15 builds already contain about 40% of those planned improvements, with internal benchmarks meeting their goals.

Hardware 4 Validation and Scaling Up

The Model Y units currently serving as driverless taxis use standard Hardware 4 (HW4/AI4) suites, with the only notable additions being the "Project Halo" communications units mounted on the rear window and a dedicated washer for the rear camera.

FSD v15 is slated to launch publicly later this year or early next year. It will bring 10x more parameters than current FSD builds, pointing to a major step up in performance and decision-making. Tesla previously confirmed that FSD v15 will run on HW4 vehicles, and its operation on Model Y fleet cars provides added confidence that customer vehicles will receive it.

Older Hardware 3 (HW3/AI3) vehicles are different. Tesla has said HW3 won't be able to achieve unsupervised autonomy, so it isn’t expected to receive FSD v15. Instead, FSD v14 Lite, which started rolling out publicly this week, appears to be the endpoint for legacy vehicles until hardware upgrades are offered to support more advanced FSD models and achieving true autonomy.

Paving the Way for Broader Robotaxi Deployment

The presence of early FSD v15 builds on public roads could accelerate Robotaxi expansion. Unsupervised Robotaxi rides launched in three additional cities this month — first in Miami, and then in Orlando and Tampa just this week.

Tesla previously said it would wait for FSD v15 before really ramping up Robotaxi expansion into new cities. Now that Model Y robotaxis are officially running early v15 builds, broader commercial availability may be close.