For a company that’s staking its future on AI and robotics, Tesla sure is having a tough time explaining its technology to government regulators. The company’s efforts to launch a robotaxi service in San Francisco, which isn’t actually a robotaxi since it features safety drivers in the front seat, is alarming state officials in charge of overseeing autonomous vehicle testing, according to a new report from Reuters.

Emails between Tesla and state officials illustrate the growing sense that the company is trying to have its cake and eat it too. Despite Elon Musk’s public statements that Tesla was getting “regulatory permission” to launch a robotaxi service in the Bay Area, the company had yet to apply for any of the needed permits to do so. Instead, the service that Tesla eventually did lau

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