A gold-painted Tesla robotaxi drew crowds across San Francisco this week, but the company carries passengers here on a limousine-class permit that legally requires a human driver — not autonomous-vehicle authority.

A gold-painted Tesla robotaxi drew crowds and phone cameras around Civic Center and the Mission this week, the San Francisco Chronicle reported — and the sighting photos ricocheting across social media all showed the same thing state law requires: a person in the driver's seat.

Tesla carries passengers in San Francisco under a single document. It is a California Public Utilities Commission Transportation Charter-Party carrier permit (PSG0046782), approved March 18, 2025. CPUC officials have publicly described it as the same class of license a limousine company holds; it authorizes prearranged, human-driven trips. It is not an autonomous-vehicle passenger permit. Tesla does not appear on the CPUC's roster of companies cleared to run AV passenger service in California — Waymo, Zoox, WeRide, Nuro and Tensor Auto do; Tesla does not.

The ride-hailing expansion the gold car is meant to promote runs on the same footing. Tesla began carrying riders to and from San Francisco International Airport on July 21 under a city limousine permit (LP-263002, valid through Jan. 31, 2027), with Model Ys running "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)" and a human legally classified as the driver. A separate entity, Tesla Robotaxi LLC, holds a California DMV testing permit — the drivered kind, with a safety operator aboard, not the driverless tier Waymo cleared for paid service last year.

Tesla has said as much to regulators. In a Feb. 13 filing in a CPUC rulemaking, the company described its robotaxi operations — Austin and the Bay Area — as "Level 2" technology requiring "a licensed human driver behind the wheel at all times," backed by remote operators. Its genuinely driverless testing is confined to Austin, outside California's jurisdiction. Tesla logged zero autonomous test miles in California in 2025. And in December, the state DMV cited the company for marketing "Autopilot" and "Full Self-Driving" in ways it called deceptive; Tesla dropped the terms from its California advertising to avoid a suspension.

Tesla did not respond to the Chronicle's request for comment. What would change the picture isn't a flashier paint job but a filing — an application to the CPUC's autonomous-passenger program. Until one lands, the gold Cybercab is exactly what the photos show: a Tesla with a driver, in a very loud color.