Tesla 'Robotaxi' rams through bollards weeks after 'impeccable' claim
A Tesla "Robotaxi" operating without a safety monitor drove straight through a row of bollards protecting a closed lane in Austin and kept going — footage that surfaced barely a month after Tesla's AI chief called the program's safety record "impeccable" on the Q2 earnings call.
Footage that surfaced Monday, August 17, shows a driverless Tesla "Robotaxi" in Austin plowing through bollards set up to protect a closed-off lane, then continuing to drive without stopping, according to Electrek.
The timing stands out. On Tesla's Q2 2026 earnings call on July 22, AI lead Ashok Elluswamy told investors the unsupervised robotaxi program had logged more than 380,000 miles with zero notable incidents, calling the safety record "impeccable" (Tesla removed in-car safety monitors in Austin back in January). The bollard video emerged less than a month later.
Electrek noted that Tesla's cumulative unsupervised mileage remains under 0.2% of Waymo's 220 million rider-only miles, arguing that a clean record over such a small sample isn't proof of safety so much as a reflection of limited exposure.
Robotaxi is central to Tesla's valuation story, so safety-adjacent footage like this can weigh on regulatory scrutiny and investor confidence. Tesla had not issued an official comment as of this report.
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