Goldman Sachs: Tesla's Robotaxi Will Start Operating In H2 2026, and Creating $115 Million Revenue in 2027
Elon Musk's ambition for autonomous driving is great, but reality is often more complex than he imagines.
This week, Goldman Sachs' Mark Delaney research team released a new report on Tesla's FSD and its Robotaxi. Goldman Sachs expects that Tesla's Robotaxi business will begin commercial operations in the second half of 2026 and achieve approximately $115 million in revenue in 2027.
Tesla's latest V13 version of the FSD system has seen a significant performance improvement. It can operate without human intervention in 97% of driving processes, with a critical intervention distance of 400-450 miles.
However, this result still has a considerable gap compared to true autonomous driving. Goldman Sachs pointed out that although FSD technology is constantly improving, its performance has not yet reached a safety level that surpasses human driving, and there is still a long way to go to achieve the goal of fully autonomous driving.
Goldman Sachs pointed out that Tesla's FSD (Full Self-Driving) technology is rapidly advancing, with the latest V13 version showing significant performance improvements over V12.
According to the testing experiences of the Goldman Sachs team, crowdsourced data, and third-party evaluations, the critical intervention distance of FSD V13 has reached between 400-450 miles, with no intervention required in 97% of driving processes.
Nevertheless, the report also mentioned that FSD technology still has a long way to go to achieve full eyes-off (Level 3 autonomous driving) or consumer-level autonomous driving (Level 4 autonomous driving). For example, historical data from Waymo shows that its vehicles only require a critical intervention every 85,000 miles in urban environments in California, while Tesla's current performance still has a lot of room for improvement.
In addition, according to traffic safety data from the U.S. government, ordinary vehicles may have an accident every 600,000-700,000 miles, and Tesla FSD's performance has not yet reached a safety level that surpasses human driving.
The report believes that although Tesla plans to achieve a safety level higher than human driving in the second quarter of 2025, this goal may be difficult to complete on schedule. However, as the performance of FSD continues to improve, Goldman Sachs expects its market penetration rate and revenue to gradually increase, which will also have a positive impact on the gross margin of Tesla's automotive business.
Goldman Sachs has for the first time separately broken down the revenue of Tesla's Robotaxi business in its model. The report predicts that Tesla's Robotaxi business will begin commercial operations in the second half of 2026 and achieve approximately $115 million in revenue in 2027.
According to Tesla's plan, the service will initially be launched in Texas and California in the United States, where the regulations are relatively relaxed. In addition, Tesla expects to start production of the dedicated Cybercab model in 2026, but Goldman Sachs pointed out that Tesla's timetable planning is often overly optimistic, and the actual progress may be delayed.
To enhance the reliability of the Robotaxi service, Tesla plans to use remote assistance and geofencing technologies in its operations, which are not currently used in the FSD consumer version. Similar models have been adopted by competitors such as Waymo, Baidu Apollo, and Pony.ai, proving that they help improve autonomous driving performance within limited geographical areas.
The report estimates that by the end of 2027, the number of Tesla Robotaxi vehicles will increase from 300 in 2026 to 1,500, with each vehicle providing 15 to 20 services per day, and the average revenue per mile will be around $2.5.
At present, companies such as Waymo, Pony.ai, and Mobileye have all made significant technological and market progress. For example, Waymo has launched Robotaxi services in multiple cities in the United States, with its vehicles requiring only one critical intervention every 85,000 miles and having completed more than 5 million passenger trips. In comparison, Tesla's FSD still needs further optimization to cope with complex urban environments and adverse weather conditions.
The report also mentioned Tesla's recently released Model Y. In January 2025, Tesla launched an upgraded version of the Model Y in the Asia-Pacific market. The new version has increased the range by 4%-7% and added new features such as a rear screen, ambient lighting, and a front bumper camera. In addition, the acceleration performance of the new model has also been improved, and the interior design is more quiet.
Although the price of the upgraded Model Y is 4%-5% higher than the old version, Goldman Sachs expects that the price may drop after large-scale production.