Tesla Robotaxis Go Fully Unsupervised in Austin
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- Tesla Robotaxis in Austin operated without onboard safety monitors on all 170 rides tracked by Robotaxi Tracker over the past two weeks, spanning 54 different cars.
- The Austin fleet is now nearly double the 28 active unsupervised vehicles Robotaxi Tracker had logged across six Texas and Florida markets as recently as last week.
- Robotaxi Tracker creator Ethan McKanna, who interned with Tesla's Robotaxi team this summer, attributed part of the increase to revised data sources rather than purely fleet expansion.
- Dallas and Houston have also seen roughly 30 driverless Teslas operating over the past week, a sharp increase from prior weeks.
- Tesla is preparing to launch the Cybercab — a purpose-built vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals — in Austin as soon as this month, making unsupervised operations essential to the rollout.
- JPMorgan reports Tesla is intentionally holding back on adding more Model Ys to the fleet, expecting the Cybercab to scale in the near term.
- Waymo operates more than 300 driverless vehicles in Austin alone and roughly 4,000 across 10 other cities, leaving Tesla far behind its main competitor.
Why it matters: Unsupervised operations are a prerequisite for Tesla's planned Cybercab rollout, since the vehicle has no steering wheel or pedals. But with Waymo running 300+ driverless cars in Austin versus Tesla's roughly 170 tracked, and Musk offering no concrete scaling target on the latest earnings call, the milestone underscores how far Tesla still trails its main rival.
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