Musk Moves Fast to Rescue Tesla’s Earnings — Robotaxi to Expand to San Francisco This Weekend

TradingKey - After Tesla’s stock plunged nearly 8% following its weak Q2 2025 earnings report, CEO Elon Musk quickly countered with a major announcement: Tesla’s Robotaxi service will launch in San Francisco as early as this weekend.

According to an exclusive report by Business Insider, Tesla announced in an internal memo on Thursday, July 24, that it will roll out its Robotaxi service in the San Francisco Bay Area — marking the first expansion beyond its limited pilot in Austin, Texas.

Tesla stated that the Robotaxi rollout has been accelerated and could begin as early as Friday, with select Tesla owners receiving invitations to use the service.

The service will initially cover most of the Bay Area, including Marin, San Francisco, and extending south to San Jose. As in Austin, the vehicles will still have safety drivers behind the wheel.

Notably, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) said Tesla has not applied for a license to test or deploy autonomous vehicles in the state. However, the agency has not clarified whether such a license is required for Tesla’s current driver-assisted Robotaxi launch.

On Friday, July 25, Tesla shares rose steadily, climbing as much as 5.91% during midday trading — suggesting investors are responding positively to the accelerated Robotaxi timeline.

Balancing Reality and Narrative

Tesla’s two consecutive quarters of disappointing earnings have highlighted the growing gap between the company’s weak fundamental performance and its ambitious AI and autonomy narrative.

While Musk continues to promote Robotaxi as a key growth driver, HSBC recently warned that the service still faces three major challenges :

1. Technical reliability of Tesla’s vision-only (camera-based) autonomous driving system
2. Consumer trust and behavior change — convincing users to rely on self-driving vehicles
3. Uncertain profitability — with high upfront costs and unclear unit economics

Still, Musk’s rapid post-earnings move signals a clear strategy: when fundamentals disappoint, double down on the future story.

Whether Robotaxi’s Bay Area expansion marks a real operational milestone — or a well-timed narrative boost — will become clearer in the weeks ahead.