Tesla Files CPUC Brief Defending Human-Supervised Robotaxi Model Over Waymo's Driverless Approach | Taha Abbasi

In a regulatory filing that reveals more about Tesla’s autonomous driving strategy than perhaps any previous disclosure, Taha Abbasi examines Tesla’s February 13 submission to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). The filing makes a bold argument that few expected: Tesla’s human-supervised ride-hailing model is actually safer and more reliable than Waymo’s fully driverless system.

The document, submitted in CPUC Rulemaking 25-08-013, represents a remarkable strategic pivot. Rather than claiming its vehicles can drive themselves without human oversight — a narrative Tesla has promoted for years — the company is now explicitly defending its multi-layered human supervision model. As Taha Abbasi reads between the lines, this filing reveals a more measured, pragmatic Tesla than the one Elon Musk typically presents on social media.

The Two-Layer Safety Architecture

Tesla’s filing describes what amounts to a belt-and-suspenders approach to ride-hailing safety. The company operates its service using Transportation Charter Party (TCP) vehicles equipped with FSD Supervised — a Level 2 Advanced Driver Assistance System that, by regulatory definition, requires a licensed human driver behind the wheel at all times. This driver must be actively monitoring the road and ready to intervene at any moment.

But Tesla adds a second layer: domestically located remote operators in both Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area. These operators hold DMV-mandated U.S. driver’s licenses, undergo extensive background checks and drug and alcohol testing, and complete specialized training programs. Tesla’s filing emphasizes that this creates redundancy — if the in-car driver fails to respond to a situation, remote operators serve as a backup layer of human oversight.

This stands in stark contrast to Waymo’s operational model. Waymo’s vehicles have no driver inside. Remote assistance operators can provide guidance in edge cases — construction zones, unusual road configurations — but they don’t control the vehicle. The car drives itself, and the remote team serves as an advisory resource, not a command-and-control center.

The San Francisco Blackout Argument

Tesla’s strongest card is the December 20, 2025, San Francisco power outage. During the blackout, Waymo’s autonomous vehicles began flooding their remote assistance systems with requests for guidance at darkened intersections. The volume overwhelmed Waymo’s team, and vehicles stopped in traffic lanes and intersections, creating gridlock and safety concerns.

Tesla’s filing notes that its own TCP vehicles “were not impacted by the outage and completed all rides that day without interruption.” The reason is self-evident: a human driver was at the wheel and navigated dark intersections the way any competent driver would. As Taha Abbasi has reported on Waymo’s remote operations, the blackout incident exposed a real vulnerability in the fully driverless model.

It’s a technically honest argument, and it’s also deeply ironic. Tesla’s vehicles weren’t affected because they weren’t autonomous. The human driver handled the situation. Tesla is essentially arguing that having a human drive the car is safer than having a robot drive the car — which is true, but also undercuts the entire premise of “Robotaxi” branding.

The Strategic Implications

Taha Abbasi sees this filing as a window into Tesla’s actual operational timeline for fully unsupervised autonomy. Despite Elon Musk’s public statements about imminent full autonomy, the CPUC filing suggests Tesla’s regulatory and operational teams are planning for a longer supervised phase than the marketing would imply.

This isn’t necessarily bad news. A gradual transition from supervised to unsupervised autonomy — one backed by billions of miles of data and proven through regulatory filings rather than tweets — might be exactly what the industry and the public need to build trust in autonomous transportation.

What This Means for the Robotaxi Race

The filing reframes the competitive landscape between Tesla and Waymo in an unexpected way. Waymo is ahead on full autonomy — its vehicles genuinely drive themselves in multiple cities. Tesla is ahead on data collection and fleet scale — its 8 billion supervised miles dwarf Waymo’s dataset.

Tesla’s argument to regulators is essentially: our supervised approach is safer today, and our data advantage means we’ll get to full autonomy on a foundation of more real-world experience than anyone else. It’s a compelling argument, even if it implicitly acknowledges that Tesla’s “Robotaxi” is currently a well-supervised taxi service. As Taha Abbasi has analyzed, the collision avoidance capabilities of Tesla’s vision system continue to improve with each data increment, and the CPUC filing suggests Tesla is content to let the data — rather than the marketing — drive the transition to full autonomy.

The question for 2026 isn’t which approach is better in theory. It’s which approach is safer in practice, and which regulatory framework will allow the transition from supervised to unsupervised operation. Tesla just told California its answer: carefully, methodically, and with humans in the loop until the data says otherwise.

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About the Author: Taha Abbasi is a technology executive, CTO, and applied frontier tech builder. Read more on Grokpedia | YouTube: The Brown Cowboy | tahaabbasi.com