Tesla's new robotaxi service might drive itself — but if it starts to rain, you could still get kicked to the curb.
YouTuber and Tesla fan Ellie Sheriff took her first ride in the company's self-driving ride-hail vehicle in Austin, Texas, and documented the whole experience on her channel "Ellie in Space." She was excited, nervous, and admittedly impressed — until the trip took an unexpected detour.
At first, everything felt like a glimpse of the future. Then came the moment no rider expects: a sudden request to exit, mid-trip, due to incoming weather.
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"So we had to get out of the robotaxi ‘cuz weather is coming in," Sheriff explained, standing in what she described as "a park with no cover" as the wind picked up. Moments later, the vehicle drove away, and her app showed a dreaded message: "high demand."
"Now we have to try to summon it again," she said. "Can't quite get a ride yet."
The incident came just minutes into her first ride, which had been mostly smooth up to that point. The robotaxi, part of Tesla's early rollout, still includes a human "safety observer" in the front passenger seat — so it's not quite the full-autonomy experience of competitors like Waymo, but it's getting there.
Still, the rain warning caused the system to shut down the trip entirely — a flaw Sheriff didn't ignore.
"I don't want to just be a Tesla raw-raw cheerleader. It is very cool," she said. "However, this is a limitation currently, how it is. You shouldn't have to terminate the service ‘cuz it's about to rain."
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She also mentioned another glitch: "It did one weird thing on my first ride, which was just randomly going into a parking lot."
After a few minutes stranded in the open, she finally got another robotaxi — the same one, in fact — and was taken back to where she started.
To be clear, Sheriff didn't walk away disappointed. In fact, she praised the ride for being uneventful — in a good way.
"It was actually remarkable how boring it was by the end," she said. "And that's how you want it to be."
She added, "Normally you see me on a plane during turbulence, I'm very anxious… but this, I was totally trusting of the technology."
Still, the moment highlighted a practical limitation. When weather rolls in, even a sleek, camera-based AI can get cold feet — or at least trigger a manual stop.
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Sheriff's experience has now joined a growing collection of robotaxi clips posted on Reddit, where users are tracking everything from cars jerking the wheel to stopping mid-road for no reason. One clip shows a robotaxi creeping into oncoming traffic; another shows one driving over a curb.
Tesla's robotaxis operate without LiDAR — the laser-mapping tech used by other AV firms — and rely entirely on cameras and neural networks. Critics argue that weather can interfere with visibility, and Ellie's ride seemed to confirm that Tesla still has work to do when the skies turn gray.
But if the experience showed anything, it's that early adopters aren't just in it for the thrill — they're gathering data. "This is part of the test," Ellie said.
For now, the robotaxi is still learning — and so are the riders. Just make sure to check the forecast before you go driverless.
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Image: Shutterstock
