Tesla, Uber, and Waymo are allowed to operate thousands of robotaxis in Nevada.

The transportation authority in Nevada has given Tesla, Uber, and Waymo approval to operate up to 8,000 robotaxis on a large scale in Clark County, where Las Vegas is located. Of these, as many as 5,000 vehicles are approved for Tesla alone.

Recently, Tesla had already received permission from the authority to deploy ten robotaxis on the Las Vegas Strip. It now appears this was only an interim approval, as Nevada granted full approval for the 5,000 units Tesla applied for in June, with only a few days of delay.

According to Tech Crunch, citing the Nevada Transportation Authority, the transportation agency of Nevada, it unanimously issued three permits for commercial robotaxi services to Tesla, Uber, and Waymo on Thursday. The permits cover Clark County, with Las Vegas as its prominent center. Together, these permits are intended to allow up to 8,000 robotaxis to operate throughout the county over the next twelve months.

While the approval for Tesla is said to allow up to 5,000 units, Tech Crunch reports that Uber and Waymo each have approvals for up to 1,000 units. The article does not explain why the figure mentioned is up to 8,000 approved vehicles instead of 7,000. What is clear is that provider Zoox already has an approval in Nevada to operate a network of 100 autonomous vehicles. These vehicles will soon face significant competition.

However, industry experts doubt that Tesla, Uber, and Waymo will fully utilize their permits. The numbers cited are likely more like upper limits. Eric Early, Tesla’s chief engineer for the Cybercab project, was quoted by Tech Crunch as saying, “I don’t think we’ll be able to deploy 5,000 vehicles by this time next year, and it’s not due to technology issues. … I think we’d be extremely happy and satisfied if we could reach 2,500 next year, maybe even a bit more.”