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Tesla on Tuesday announced what appeared to be a major development in its efforts to penetrate the Bay Area's ride-hail market: passenger service to San Francisco International Airport.
"Our Bay Area rideshare service now goes to SFO," company spokespeople wrote in a cryptic post on X, punctuated with an airplane logo.
The company did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A representative of SFO said Tesla has been issued a limousine permit to provide rides to and from the hub, meaning the vehicles must have a human driver.
"Tesla has not been issued for any autonomous operations at SFO," airport spokesperson Doug Yakel told the Chronicle.
The rollout came in a period when Waymo, the region's autonomous vehicle giant, has effectively paused airport service. Waymo secured permits to pick up and drop off travelers at the SFO rental car center earlier this year, following months of negotiations and a long process during which Waymo mapped roads to the facility.
But in May, Waymo froze operations on freeways across the U.S. as its engineers worked on a software fix for self-driving cars that had entered construction zones in the Bay Area and Phoenix.
Because it is highly difficult to drive to SFO on surface streets, the company has all but cut off its own airport access until the technology upgrade is complete.
Tesla does not have permission from California's regulatory bodies to operate autonomous vehicle service in the state. However, the California Public Utilities Commission granted the company a transportation charter party carrier permit in March of last year, enabling it to run a fleet with drivers who are company employees, similar to a town car or limousine operator.
In subsequent months, Tesla unleashed its Robotaxi model on Bay Area roads, with humans behind the wheel. In July 2025, company CEO Elon Musk wrote a series of ambiguous social media posts promising to expand the robotaxi service he had launched in Austin, Texas to San Francisco "in a month or two." The Austin service featured a human chaperone riding shotgun in the self-driving vehicle. Tesla could not legally replicate that set-up in California, as it lacks authorization for vehicles to drive without a human.
A spokesperson for the CPUC said Tesla "has not requested nor been granted any changes to their (transportation charter party) permit since it was approved."
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