Tesla’s autonomous journey hailing service went reside simply over every week in the past with practically a dozen robotaxis shuttling passengers in downtown Austin. Tesla influencers from throughout the nation descended upon the Texan capital to take part within the historic occasion—assuming they had been fortunate sufficient to nab a coveted invite.
In a primary sense, CEO Elon Musk delivered on his timetable, first introduced again in January.
Or did he?
If you happen to ask Polymarket, the place $7.2 million in bets have been positioned over the previous 4 weeks on a June launch, the resounding reply isn’t any.
Anybody that wagered cash Tesla would in reality go to market stands to lose their wager. At current, the chance has sunk to only a 2% success charge. Barring a last-second shock, their bets are scheduled to run out nugatory when the clock strikes 11 p.m. Texas native time.
One account, for instance, bought 420,000 shares at a median of round 12 cents—every cent is equal to at least one share level of chance. Had been that particular person to liquidate now previous to expiry, they stand to lose 86% of their wager.
Lacking puzzle piece
The lacking puzzle piece that would change that every one instantly had been if Musk opened the service as much as all Austin residents. Underneath the phrases of the wager, that’s the threshold that have to be met to ensure that the rollout to qualify.
At current, solely these explicitly invited, a lot of whom are a choose group of superfans with giant followings within the Tesla group, could hail one among his robotaxis. Proper now there’s not loads of optimism issues will change over the approaching 4 weeks, both, with the chances for a July launch at lower than one in three.
Whereas the market is celebrating $TSLA launching a robotaxi right this moment, the betting market simply despatched the chances of that occuring plummeting decrease. pic.twitter.com/XDfdQj2N0g— Gordon Johnson (@GordonJohnson19) June 23, 2025
What about Friday’s spectacular demonstration of a Tesla automotive driving itself from the manufacturing facility exterior Austin to a ready proprietor roughly a half-hour away? That was Tesla’s second milestone in lower than every week, an early birthday current for Musk earlier than turning 54 this weekend.
That too doesn’t qualify.
“A program that’s restricted to Tesla workers, invite-only testers, closed-beta members, manufacturing facility self-delivery options, or the mere launch of Full Self-Driving software program for personal owner-drivers is not going to qualify,” the location states in its phrases.
That is the simplicity of Polymarket. In contrast to fairness investments the place a inventory can nonetheless value in future money flows with out the corresponding goal truly being achieved on deadline, there is no such thing as a shifting the goalpost with prediction markets.
As soon as the phrases are introduced, both the agreed upon standards are met or they don’t seem to be—the end result is all the time binary.
Extra than simply semantics—Tesla’s capacity to scale is core to its robotaxi promise
Whereas a missed wager doesn’t diminish the accomplishments these previous few days of Tesla—which didn’t reply to a request for remark—the difficulty is extra than simply semantic.
Musk’s core promise to distinguish Tesla from opponents like Google’s Waymo is a capability to scale exponentially in a single day as soon as the AI-enabled expertise proves itself secure.
That’s as a result of the entrepreneur has been telling his traders for practically 9 years that each automotive leaving its manufacturing facility since October 2016 comes outfitted with the required {hardware} pre-installed to drive autonomously.
Whereas Waymo has to first purchase vehicles just like the Jaguar I-Tempo EV after which match them with pricey sensors and computing energy, there’s no want for that with regards to Tesla, in accordance with Musk. The autos have already been constructed and delivered to buyer palms. They’re merely ready to be woke up.
“Abruptly 3 million vehicles will be capable of drive themselves,” he predicted two years in the past.
All he must do is flip a swap and push the over-the-air firmware replace out to the complete fleet. He’s known as it Tesla’s “ChatGPT second”.
As a substitute the CEO nonetheless is conserving a decent leash on which prospects can use his restricted robotaxi fleet. For now, that’s one large promise Musk nonetheless must ship.
