Tesla stock pops 8% as Musk touts 'successful' robotaxi Austin launch

Tesla's Model Y robotaxi yet deed the roadworthy this weekend, sending shares of the electrical conveyance shaper up 8% connected Monday.

The EV elephantine debuted autonomous rides successful Austin, Texas, connected Sunday, opening the work to a constricted fig of riders by invitation only.

Those invited included longtime Tesla fans, promoters and shareholders, galore of whom make income from posting Tesla- and Musk-related societal media contented connected platforms including X and YouTube.

CEO Elon Musk said successful a station connected his societal web X that customers were charged a level interest of $4.20 per ride.

"Super congratulations to the @Tesla_AI bundle & spot plan teams connected a palmy @Robotaxi launch!! Culmination of a decennary of hard work. Both the AI spot and bundle teams were built from scratch wrong Tesla," helium said successful a post.

One rider successful Tesla's aboriginal entree programme for the Model Y robotaxis wrote on X that they did 11 rides with the work with "zero issues." Musk reposted galore firsthand encounters with the services.

Other roadworthy users and researchers observed the robotaxis appearing to interruption postulation rules successful Austin.

The Verge reported a Tesla Model Y robotaxi concisely traveled the incorrect mode down a roadworthy successful Austin. Tesla-critical writer Ed Niedermeyer shared a video from Austin showing a Tesla robotaxi braking hard successful the mediate of postulation successful effect to "stationary constabulary vehicles extracurricular its driving path."

Musk has agelong promised a Tesla robotaxi fleet to investors, amping up the unit to present successful caller months.

Once considered a pioneer, Tesla is present trying to drawback up to Alphabet's Waymo successful the West, and Chinese competitors including Baidu's Apollo Go, WeRide and Pony.ai. Waymo has reported that it is present delivering much than 250,000 commercialized driverless rides per week and surpassed 10 cardinal trips past month. Apollo Go reported that it has surpassed 11 cardinal trips.

Musk told CNBC's David Faber past period that Tesla aims to person "hundreds of thousands, if not implicit a million" self-driving cars successful the U.S. by the extremity of adjacent year. In May, Musk archetypal announced plans to motorboat the work successful Austin, with aboriginal debuts acceptable for Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Heading into the launch, Tesla faced pushback from a radical of Democratic lawmakers in Texas and nationalist information advocates who urged the institution to hold the debut.

The institution has not yet released the systems being tested connected Texas streets, known arsenic FSD Unsupervised, to wide Tesla owners.

Tesla sells its caller EVs with partially automated driving systems marketed arsenic the modular Autopilot, and premium FSD Supervised systems. These see features specified arsenic automatic lane-keeping and navigation, and person been linked to accidents, including fatalities, according to information tracked by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

— CNBC's Lora Kolodny contributed reporting.