Tesla has applied for a permit to operate a ride-hailing service in California, but it will be using human drivers rather than the promised robotaxi.

Last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed that Tesla would launch “unsupervised self-driving in Texas and California in Q2 2025.”

However, we suspected that this would not be “unsupervised self-driving’ in customer vehicles like Tesla has been promising since 2016, but an internal fleet with teleoperation support in a geo-fenced area for ride-hailing services, much like Waymo has been doing for years.

Sure enough, Musk confirmed last month that this was the plan for Austin in June. We describe this as a “moving of the goal post” for Tesla.

With the focus on Austin in June, Tesla stopped talking about California, which was announced to happen at the same time as Texas last year.

Now, Bloomberg reports that Tesla has applied for a ride-hailing permit in California:

The electric vehicle manufacturer applied late last year for what’s known as a transportation charter-party carrier permit from the California Public Utilities Commission, according to documents viewed by Bloomberg.