Tesla asked Las Vegas for 5,000 robotaxi permits. Sin City gave it 10, capped the speed at 45mph, and banned airport trips
Fortune · C · trust 32/100
The Strip is one of Nevada’s most concentrated gambling corridors. Sin City casinos there brought in roughly $8.8 billion in gaming revenue in 2025—about $24 million a day—and raked in roughly 56% of the state’s $15.8 billion in total gaming revenue that year. It also saw 38.5 million visitors in 2025, directly supporting more than 250,000 jobs in the area.
So it wasn’t a surprise with Tesla Robotaxi filed an application with the Nevada Transportation Authority (NTA) in June and asked for permits for 5,000 autonomous vehicles to operate within the city. But it was a surprise when the NTA responded a month later, giving the robotaxi arm of Elon Musk’s brainchild a “maximum fleet of ten (10) fully autonomous vehicles.” The permit also confined those 10 robotaxis to an Authority-approved corridor along the Strip and barred speeds above 45 mph. Most importantly for the tourism industry, the permit prohibits passenger pickups within one-quarter mile of the airport “unless authorized by the airport operator and all required governmental approvals have been obtained.”
Every vehicle must be marked “Robotaxi,” riders must be notified before each trip they’re in a driverless vehicle, and operations require “appropriate human supervision” under Society of Automotive Engineers standards. That supervision requirement is a step back from what Tesla runs elsewhere: The company has offered rides in parts of Austin with no safety monitor in the vehicle since January, and Nevada’s language suggests regulators aren’t ready to extend Tesla that same latitude here.
Clark County, which doesn’t issue the permit itself but has to live with what the NTA approves, says the arrangement leaves it managing fallout without a formal role in setting the terms.
“While the Clark County does not authorize this type of transportation on our roadways, we are directly impacted by the operations of the robotaxis,” a county spokesperson told Fortune. “County impacts include several departments such as Clark County Fire, Business License, and Harry Reid International Airport to name a few, and we are working to get our arms around how best to facilitate these types of operations going forward.”
Neither Tesla nor the Nevada Transportation Authority responded to Fortune’s request for comment.
Tesla had been building toward this before the permit came through. The company is putting $3.1 million into retrofitting a 37,000-square-foot building in the southwest Las Vegas valley, just as it undergoes hiring for Vegas-based robotaxi roles. Unlike Zoox and Motional, both of which lease or partner for their vehicles, Tesla builds the car, writes the self-driving software, and now holds the commercial permit all under one roof.
Tesla isn’t the first company to go through this process, and the terms it got look modest next to what’s already running. Amazon’s Zoox has held permits since 2025, starting under a 65-vehicle cap on a free-rides-only basis. The NTA amended that permit in July this year, two weeks before Tesla’s approval, to allow up to 100 vehicles and paid fares, and Zoox began charging for those rides on Aug. 10, after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration granted it a two-year federal exemption covering up to 2,500 vehicles nationwide, due to Zoox’s robotaxi having no steering wheel or pedals, putting it outside several federal vehicle safety standards.
In Las Vegas alone, Zoox says its fleet has logged more than 3 million miles and carried nearly a million riders for free since last year; it’s now running roughly 50 cars on the Strip and pricing rides at a “comfort” tier, which is above standard UberX fares. Zoox’s longer track record in Nevada—reporting has put its Las Vegas totals as high as 100 vehicles and 350,000 rides along the Strip—likely explains why the NTA started Tesla at 10 rather than at a larger number: The Authority has effectively used Zoox’s rollout as a template for scaling a new permit up over time.
For now, Tesla’s Las Vegas presence is 10 cars on a quarter-mile-restricted stretch of the Strip, capped at 45 mph, with no word yet on when rides start.
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