Tesla to Wait for FSD V15 Before Launching Robotaxi at Scale, Lists Next Cities

During the Q1 2026 earnings call, Tesla shared an update on its unsupervised Robotaxi program. While the company is already testing uncrewed vehicles on public roads, executives said a broad commercial expansion will wait until the release of Full Self-Driving v15.

FSD V15

Tesla is pausing a nationwide rollout because of what v15 represents. Elon Musk described v15 as a “major architectural improvement” that would “improve the probability of safety significantly.” Ashok Elluswamy said FSD v15 will be a major upgrade over the current v14.3 variant running on Robotaxis today.

Although Tesla says the current v14 build is already statistically safer than a human driver, v15 is intended to achieve the superhuman reliability needed for mass commercialization. Tesla has said that FSD v15 will run on existing HW4 vehicles, and it may also be optimized for AI4+ hardware, which Tesla plans to introduce next year.

FSD v15 is expected to handle more complex edge cases, such as anticipating the movement of pedestrians hidden by large trucks and navigating chaotic, multi-lane urban roundabouts without hesitation.

Delayed Gratification

Even as Tesla proceeds with a launch in two new cities, the company is holding back from scaling up because major improvements are in the pipeline.

Deploying tens of thousands of uncrewed vehicles in large metropolitan areas brings substantial physical risk, regulatory scrutiny, and corporate liability. Scaling today would expand a v14 architecture that the engineering team knows is close to being deprecated.

Validating a new foundational AI model demands caution and millions of rigorous testing miles to ensure there are zero regressions in safety. By waiting for the v15 software branch, Tesla aims to ensure that when thousands of uncrewed vehicles enter public streets, they operate on the definitive long-term brain of FSD.

Accordingly, the large commercial rollout of the Robotaxi fleet is aligned with the V15 timeline, targeting the end of 2026 or early 2027.

Next Robotaxi Cities

While holding off on a nationwide expansion, Tesla is focusing on a specific set of markets where it is increasing unsupervised rides and preparing for future operations.

Tesla will likely seed relatively small fleets in these markets. These limited deployments will act as testing and validation environments so vehicles can learn localized driving behaviors ahead of the broader v15 rollout.