Tesla Is Hiring, the Stock Is Down. Musk Is Ramping Up His Robo-Taxi Drive.

In June, Tesla launched a robo-taxi service in Austin, Texas, using Model Y vehicles running the company’s Full Self-Driving software. (Courtesy Tesla)

Tesla stock fell on Thursday as the Elon Musk-led company looks to add robo-taxi employees in the Big Apple.

In early trading, shares of the electric vehicle maker lost 1.1%, closing at $335.58, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average finished close to flat.

The move came after The Wall Street Journal found a job posting late Wednesday that was looking for “Vehicle Operators, Autopilot.” The job will be based in Flushing, in the New York City borough of Queens.

“We are looking for a highly motivated self-starter to join our vehicle data collection team,” reads part of the posting. “You will be responsible for driving an engineering vehicle for extended periods, conducting dynamic audio and camera data collection for testing and training purposes.”

Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment about the posting.

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It appears to be part of the process of extending the company’s self-driving taxi service, launched in Austin, Texas in June. Musk has plans to expand the service significantly by the end of the year.

“I think we’ll probably have autonomous ride-hailing in probably half of the population of the U.S. by the end of the year,” said Musk on Tesla’s second-quarter earnings conference call in July. “That’s at least our goal, subject to regulatory approvals. I think we’ll technically be able to do it…But we are very, very cautious. We don’t want to take any chances.”

Tesla has to get going if it wants to reach Musk’s goal. The population of Austin is about 1 million, or just 0.3% of the total U.S.

The Austin launch was measured, with only a handful of vehicles serving Tesla-selected riders, and with safety monitors in the front passenger seat of each car.

As for New York, it appears employees will be monitoring self-driving operations while Tesla vehicles learn to navigate Manhattan’s busy streets. Alphabet’s Waymo began autonomous testing and mapping in New York in July.

Tesla is chasing Waymo, which completes more than 250,000 fully autonomous taxi rides each week. Waymo is larger now, but Tesla is betting its technology and manufacturing scale will make it the self-driving leader. Essentially, any Tesla manufactured recently running the most up-to-date Full Self Driving (FSD) software can become a robo-taxi, and Tesla can make millions of cars a year.

Winning in self-driving cars is a big deal for both. Wall Street pegs the opportunity for AI-trained ride-hailing services in the trillions of dollars. For many analysts bullish on Tesla stock, AI projects and self-driving technology account for up to 75% of the company’s total valuation.

Coming into Thursday trading, Tesla stock was down about 16% so far this year, but up about 63% over the past 12 months.

Shares snapped a five-day winning streak on Wednesday, falling 0.5%. A few things helped the recent rally. For starters, the market was higher over that span. Third-quarter EV demand in the U.S. is also looking strong, although that could be because buyers will lose the $7,500 federal tax credit in September.

Robo-taxis played a role, too. Musk posted several updates about Tesla’s FSD product over the weekend, pointing out the version Austin robo-taxis are running is more advanced than what Tesla drivers use, adding that coming versions of FSD represent dramatic improvements.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com