Musk explains why Tesla Robotaxi is not running at night, and lidar is the answer — SkimNews
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- Tesla Robotaxi extended Austin operating hours to 11 PM (from 10 PM), with Elon Musk explaining the cutoff by citing cameras' inability to spot low-light, low-contrast objects like "grey kittens on grey tarmac in the dark."
- Tesla launched Robotaxi in Austin in June 2025 running 6 AM to midnight — the service now closes an hour earlier than on day one, fifteen months later, and has barely scaled since launch even after adding Cybercabs last month.
- Tesla removed radar from its cars in May 2021, dropped ultrasonic sensors in 2022, and has never shipped a car with lidar — despite Musk telling Electrek in direct messages that "vision with high-res radar would be better than pure vision."
- NHTSA is investigating 3.2 million Teslas over FSD crashes in low-visibility conditions and has demanded an internal Tesla document titled "Radar Saves Us," according to the source.
- Waymo runs roughly 4,000 lidar-equipped driverless vehicles 24 hours a day with 13 cameras, 4 lidars, and 6 radars per car — though a Waymo did hit a San Francisco bodega cat last October when it darted under the car.
- Musk called lidar "a fool's errand" in April 2019, a "seductive local maximum" in February 2022, and claimed in August 2025 that "lidar and radar reduce safety due to sensor contention" — the opposite of his current night-vision rationale.
- Customer Teslas continue to run "Full Self-Driving" on the same cameras at any hour with no curfew, meaning the same sensor limitation Musk cited for Robotaxi is live on consumer cars right now.
Why it matters: Musk's cute-pets rationale exposes a physics limit Tesla accepted by killing radar in 2021 — and the NHTSA probe into 3.2 million Teslas over low-visibility FSD crashes shows regulators are now scrutinizing that sensor-stack decision. Waymo's 4,000 lidar-equipped cars run 24/7; Tesla spent fifteen months to add back one service hour it had on launch day.
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