Tesla's Self-Driving Taxis Are Now Available in Dallas and Houston—But They Work Differently

Tesla has started offering self-driving taxi services in Dallas and Houston using Model 3 and Model Y cars that operate completely on their own with no human driver behind the wheel. Unlike other companies building self-driving cars, Tesla isn't using lidar—a special sensor that works like radar to "see" the road by bouncing sound waves around. Instead, Tesla's approach relies only on cameras and sensors, like how human eyes and ears help you drive. The cars use eight cameras positioned around the vehicle to watch everything, twelve sensors that detect nearby objects, and radar to track movement, all processed by custom computer chips. People at remote control centers can monitor the cars while they operate. This experiment tests whether Tesla's camera-and-sensor approach can work just as well as the more complicated systems other self-driving car companies use.