Toronto, Ontario — A Tesla autonomous Model Y vehicle scraped a parked car in Austin, Texas, two weeks after the launch of the company’s robotaxi program.
The Tesla scratched itself against the tires of a parked Toyota while trying to exit a dimly lit alleyway. The incident was filmed and later posted online by a YouTube channel called DirtyTesla. He had just been dropped off by a robotaxi when he saw the incident, describing in the video that “A robotaxi starts to go and for whatever reason, it turns left towards the parked car and it kind of slows down and then it kind of starts to go again and then the hazard lights come on on the vehicle.”
According to DirtyTesla, the scrape nudged the parked car’s tire and the onboard safety operator took control of the vehicle and drove it away. No one was injured, but the incident reignited criticism of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving technology. Tesla uses only cameras and neural networks driven by AI to interpret its surroundings, unlike other companies such as Waymo which also use lidar or radar.
There are only a limited number of robotaxis in Austin and they operate under close supervision. However, the incident raises concerns about Tesla’s ability to navigate dark and enclosed spaces. Other reported incidents include one robotaxi crossing a double yellow line before correcting itself and another robotaxi that stopped for emergency lights that weren’t on the road. Tesla has not made a statement about the incident.
Waymo ridership is on the rise in California, serving 250,000 paid trips in the U.S. in 2025, marking a five times increase from a year ago. Waymo recorded more than 700,000 monthly paid trips in California as of March 2025, representing a significant increase from the 12,617 monthly paid trips reported in August 2023.
Accelerating autonomous vehicle adoption has propelled Waymo’s growth, with driverless taxi services becoming more popular in urban centres. Waymo is available in Austin, Texas; Los Angeles, California; Phoenix, Arizona and San Francisco, California with planned expansion into Atlanta, Georgia; Miami, Florida; Washington, DC; and Tokyo, Japan.
