Tesla is building a teleoperations team to support its upcoming robotaxi service, a significant shift from the company's previous rhetoric of achieving full autonomy without human intervention. According to a recent job listing, Tesla is hiring a software engineer to develop a teleoperations system that will allow human operators to remotely access and control its robotaxis and humanoid robots.

The software engineer will be responsible for "driving requirements, making design decisions, and implementing software integration for this custom teleoperation system." While the job posting doesn't clarify whether Tesla is expanding an existing teleops team or building one from scratch, the existence of such a team is notable for two reasons. Firstly, it signals Tesla's seriousness about deploying robotaxis on public roads. Secondly, it deviates from CEO Elon Musk's previous claims of achieving full autonomy through advanced neural network training and camera-based perception.

Musk has repeatedly emphasized Tesla's ability to achieve full autonomy without relying on human intervention. In 2019, he predicted that Tesla would have over a million robotaxis on the road by 2020. However, the company has yet to achieve this goal, and the development of a teleoperations team suggests that Tesla is acknowledging the need for human oversight in certain situations.

In the autonomous vehicle industry, teleoperations are considered an essential building block for rolling out self-driving cars on public roads. Companies like Waymo, which operates a commercial autonomous ride-hail service in several US cities, already have teleoperations systems in place to handle edge cases like construction zones, collisions, and hardware failures. The decisions made by remote operators are also a valuable source of training data for Level 4 autonomous operations.

Tesla isn't new to teleops, having relied on remote operators controlling its Optimus bots to mix drinks and interact with guests during the Tesla "We, Robot" event in October. However, the requirements for remotely operating robotaxis would be different, with a focus on driving controls, real-time mapping, and decision-making support for complex situations.

Tesla revealed its robotaxi prototype last month, a Cybercab built without a steering wheel or pedals that can carry two passengers. Musk said that Tesla would begin production on the vehicle in 2026 or 2027, although this timeline should be taken with a grain of salt given the executive's history of overpromising. Musk also claimed that Tesla is already testing a self-driving service in the Bay Area with employees, with plans to launch a service that will let people hail self-driving Teslas in California and Texas sometime in 2025.

It's unclear whether Tesla's teleoperations team will be responsible for assisting only purpose-built robotaxis or also Tesla vehicles owned by regular people on the roads today. Musk has previously claimed that Tesla vehicles with existing hardware would one day be able to drive fully autonomously with just an over-the-air software update, but he has since walked back on those claims.

Tesla did not respond to requests for more information about the teleoperations team. The development of this team marks a significant shift in Tesla's approach to autonomy, and it will be interesting to see how the company balances its ambitions with the need for human oversight in the years to come.