AUSTIN, Texas - Tesla said on Saturday that it now has more than 300 Cybercabs serving riders in Austin, an eightfold increase in the month since it opened paid rides in the two-seat robotaxi, and a senior executive said Dallas would be the next city to get the vehicle.
"One month after launch, we've scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin - an 8x increase in 30 days," the company's Robotaxi account posted on X on Saturday afternoon, alongside video of gold Cybercabs on Austin streets. Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla's vice president of AI, wrote later that afternoon that two years after the Cybercab was unveiled at Tesla's WeRobot event on Oct. 10, 2024, "the cabs are everywhere in Austin now. Dallas soon." He did not give a date.
It is the largest Cybercab fleet figure Tesla has given publicly for the car, which has no steering wheel or pedals. Tesla had 45 Cybercabs authorized for commercial use in Texas when it opened rides in Austin on Sept. 3, CNBC reported, citing Texas Department of Motor Vehicles records. The state registry showed 169 by early October and 319 on Oct. 9 after 150 vehicles were added in a single day, according to NotATeslaKiller, which tracks the records. On Friday, Tesla's main account posted "Floodgates are opening."
Registration and service are not the same thing, TeslaNorth noted, which makes Saturday's post the company's own claim about cars actually carrying riders. Tesla did not say how many of the 300-plus Cybercabs run without a safety monitor on board, whether wait times have shortened, or whether hours have changed. The Austin service has run until 11 p.m. since early October.
Dallas had not been the expected next stop. Spotters had counted close to 200 Cybercabs parked at a Tesla lot in Houston, where driverless Model Y robotaxis already operate, Not a Tesla App reported. Tesla runs unsupervised Model Y rides in Dallas across a service area of about 31 square miles centered on downtown, according to the outlet. Austin remains the only city where riders can hail a Cybercab.
The expansion comes as federal regulators examine how the car was certified. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an audit query on Sept. 3, the day commercial Cybercab service began, to review how Tesla concluded that a vehicle without conventional manual controls meets federal safety standards. Tesla has until Oct. 30 to answer the agency's questions after receiving a 30-day extension.
