Tesla

Tesla AI-software head Ashok Elluswamy said that Cybercabs were in Austin and that Dallas was next. The statement did not announce that Cybercab rides had started in Dallas.

Tesla said that more than 300 Cybercabs were serving Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days. The statement did not provide passenger-trip, utilization, wait-time, or service-definition figures.

Elon Musk said Tesla was trying to ensure that its vehicles did not run over pets that are hard to see at night. Not a Tesla App reported that identifying and avoiding animals on the road was Tesla's main nighttime-driving issue.

Tesla extended the Austin Robotaxi service's nightly operating window to 11 p.m. The Robotaxi account announced the change on X at 8:52 p.m. Pacific Time, and Elon Musk confirmed that closing had moved from the previous 10 p.m.

Tesla said it built its first Cybercab using cathode material produced in-house. The reports attributed the manufacturing milestone to Tesla's announcement.

NHTSA granted Tesla a 30-day extension for its response to the Cybercab certification Special Order, setting an October 30 deadline. The September 10 Special Order had required a response by September 30, 2026.

Electrek, citing Robotaxi Tracker data, reported that eight Tesla robotaxis had been observed carrying passengers in Austin over the preceding seven days. The figure was an observation-based active-service count rather than a statewide registration count.

Tesla said its automated Cybercab drive-unit assembly line was producing one drive unit every 10 seconds. The claim concerned drive-unit assembly rather than complete Cybercab final assembly.

An Axios reporter said an Austin Cybercab dropped him at an adjacent Whataburger rather than his requested destination. Axios published the account on September 16 after the reported September 15 trip.

Tesla began the Cybercab Japan Tour with a public display in Tokyo's Aoyama district. Tesla Japan described Cybercab as a dedicated vehicle developed for the Robotaxi autonomous ride-hailing service and said it was being publicly shown in Japan for the first time.

NHTSA issued a Special Order requiring Tesla to show, under oath, how a vehicle with no steering wheel, pedals or mirrors complies with federal safety standards written for human drivers. Tesla has until September 30 to respond, and failing to answer fully and truthfully carries penalties of up to $139 million.

Tesla put the Cybercab on public display at the ELEMENTS mall in Hong Kong from September 9 to 15, describing the city as the first stop of an Asia tour, the vehicle's first showing outside the United States since production began.

NHTSA opened an Audit Query into Tesla's certification that the Cybercab meets applicable federal vehicle safety standards. The agency said it would investigate Tesla's certification process and technical data.

Tesla Autonomy VP Ashok Elluswamy said the Robotaxi fleet had completed 1 million miles of unsupervised operations. He made the statement during Tesla's invite-only Cybercab presentation in Austin.

Hours before the launch event Tesla published a robotaxi interest form inviting businesses to register for Cybercab fleet purchasing, mobility hubs and infrastructure, or event collaboration, the first sign that it may sell the vehicle to third-party operators rather than run every car itself. Musk's earlier vision had relied on owners adding their personal cars to a Tesla network; fleet managers such as Moove already operate Waymo vehicles in several cities.

On the day of its invitation-only launch event Tesla updated its robotaxi site to say Cybercab rides were available in limited areas of Austin, released a video in which Musk called it the first car built specifically for unsupervised full self-driving, and let attendees ride in the gold two-seaters. NHTSA said it was in contact with Tesla and evaluating the situation, since federal rules cap sales of vehicles without steering wheels and pedals. Texas records showed 45 Cybercabs among 420 Tesla vehicles registered for driverless operation.

The day before its launch event Tesla ran driverless Cybercabs, with no steering wheel and nobody on board, on public streets in Austin; video clips circulated on X and Musk posted A storm of Cybercabs. Texas DMV records that night showed 45 Cybercabs among 420 Tesla vehicles authorised for driverless operation in the state, and a tracker counted about 200 unsupervised vehicles across Tesla's U.S. fleet in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa.

Tesla posted a flyer for a September 3 Cybercab launch event and chose attendees through a Robotaxi rider sweepstakes and direct invitations. Musk had warned that the early production rate would be agonisingly slow; Texas transport officials said the car would dramatically scale the service.

The Nevada Transportation Authority unanimously approved Tesla Robotaxi LLC, Waymo and Aviari (Uber's partners) as autonomous vehicle network companies for paid driverless rides in Clark County, with Tesla allowed up to 5,000 vehicles in its first year against 1,000 each for the others. Weeks earlier the authority had capped Tesla at 10 cars. Tesla's Cybercab chief engineer Eric Early told the meeting 5,000 was a ceiling and that 2,500 within a year would satisfy the company. Operations must begin within 120 days of permit issue.

Electrek reported video of an Austin Model Y Robotaxi driving through bollards protecting a closed lane. The outlet said no safety monitor was aboard and could not determine whether a remote operator was involved.

Nevada granted Tesla a Clark County robotaxi permit for up to 10 vehicles. Axios reported that Tesla had sought approval for up to 5,000 robotaxis.

During Tesla's second-quarter earnings webcast, Ashok Elluswamy said the unsupervised Robotaxi fleet had driven more than 380,000 miles across six cities in two states. He said Tesla had recorded zero notable incidents.

The second-quarter deck said Cybercab had begun production at Gigafactory Texas with installed capacity above 125,000 a year, that engineering test drives of production Cybercabs on public roads had started and employees were riding in them on the Giga Texas campus, and that unsupervised rides had launched in Miami, Orlando and Tampa in July, taking the service to seven metros. Cumulative paid robotaxi miles were charted at around two million.

NHTSA published a notice of proposed rulemaking to amend FMVSS No. 135. The proposal addressed application of the brake standard to vehicles with and without manually operated driving controls, while retaining stopping-distance requirements.

Tesla began testing a production Cybercab with two seats and no steering wheel or pedals in Austin. TechCrunch reported that a safety monitor sat in the right-front passenger seat during the tests.

Newly unredacted crash reports released by NHTSA gave narrative descriptions for all 17 crashes Tesla had logged on the Robotaxi network since launch; Tesla had previously blacked out every description as confidential. Two of the crashes, in July 2025 and January 2026 in Austin, happened while a remote operator was driving the car at under 10 mph after the safety monitor asked for help: one mounted a curb into a metal fence, the other scraped a construction barricade. Other cases included an unprotected left turn into a parking-lot chain and a dog that ran into the road. Most of the rest were other vehicles hitting the Teslas. Musk had said the month before that making sure things are completely safe was the biggest limit on expansion.

Elon Musk said Terafab planned to use Intel's 14A process. Tom’s Hardware reported that the plan was for use when Terafab had production capacity and the process had matured.

The first-quarter deck listed Cybercab in pilot production at Giga Texas, said Tesla expected volume production of Cybercab and Semi in 2026 and that Cybercab would over time replace the Model Y fleet, and reported unsupervised rides in Dallas and Houston in April along with a larger Austin area. On the call Musk said production had begun but would be very slow before ramping late in the year, with little revenue before 2027; Tesla said the car meets federal safety standards and needs no NHTSA exemption.

Intel announced it had joined the Terafab project alongside SpaceX, xAI and Tesla. An Intel filing later described Intel as a strategic Terafab partner.

The fourth-quarter deck confirmed that Tesla began testing driverless Robotaxis in Austin in December and began removing the safety monitor from customer rides in January on a limited basis, which it said would unlock a larger fleet and coverage area. Cybercab was listed as in tooling at Giga Texas with its production ramp commencing in the first half of 2026, and the Robotaxi app waitlist was gone in served areas.

Musk posted that Tesla had started Robotaxi drives in Austin with no safety monitor in the car, seven months after launch. Tesla had begun driverless testing in December; AI chief Ashok Elluswamy said a few unsupervised vehicles would be mixed into the monitored fleet with the ratio rising over time. Riders reported being charged, and chase cars were seen following the driverless vehicles.

At the annual meeting in Austin, Tesla said 75 percent of votes cast backed the 2025 CEO Performance Award, a stock grant of up to 423.7 million shares paid in twelve tranches as market value climbs from $2 trillion to $8.5 trillion and operational goals are met. Alongside 20 million vehicles, 10 million active FSD subscriptions and a million Optimus robots, the goals include one million robotaxis in commercial operation.

The third-quarter deck said Tesla had grown the Austin service area and fleet, launched the Bay Area ride-hailing service and opened the Robotaxi app waitlist to everyone in the U.S. and Canada, and that Cybercab remained on schedule for volume production starting in 2026. On the call Musk said Cybercab production would begin in April 2026 and that safety monitors would be removed in parts of Austin by the end of the year.

Tesla's Robotaxi account posted that the iOS app was now available to all, linking to the App Store and a waitlist, in line with Musk's forecast of a September public opening. Until then the Austin service had been limited to invited riders. The app's rules required riders to be 18 to travel alone, and Tesla said it was pursuing permits in Arizona, Florida and Nevada.

Tesla opened an invite-only ride-hailing service from San Francisco to San Jose through the Robotaxi app, but with a driver in the driver's seat running FSD Supervised, because the California Public Utilities Commission had confirmed days earlier that Tesla had not applied for authorisation to carry passengers in autonomous vehicles, paid or unpaid. The company's California permits covered only conventional chartered service.

Tesla's Robotaxi service began on a Sunday afternoon in a fenced area of Austin with roughly ten modified Model Ys, invited riders, mostly influencers and investors, a Tesla employee in the front passenger seat as safety monitor, daytime-only hours and a flat $4.20 fare announced by Musk on X. It was the first time Tesla carried paying passengers in cars with no one in the driver's seat.

Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 2807 two days before Tesla's Austin launch. From September 1, 2025, operating a vehicle on public roads without a human driver would require authorisation from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, which could revoke permits for vehicles that endanger the public and required first-responder interaction plans. The law replaced a 2017 statute that had barred cities from regulating self-driving cars.

A letter dated May 8 from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation, published on May 12, asked Tesla how it would evaluate its robotaxi vehicles for public roads: fleet size and models, how the system relates to FSD Supervised, how safety would be judged, whether future vehicles would meet federal safety standards or need exemptions, and how the cars would handle sun glare, fog, dust, rain or snow. The letter cited Tesla's April 23 post about its employee ride-hailing pilot and set a June 19 deadline.

The first-quarter deck said Tesla remained on track for a pilot launch of Robotaxi in Austin by June, showed a Model Y driving itself unsupervised to the outbound lot at Giga Texas, and reported progress installing Cybercab lines in Texas, still scheduled for volume production in 2026. The next day Tesla posted that an FSD Supervised ride-hailing service was live for employees in Austin and the Bay Area.

The fourth-quarter deck listed Cybercab as in development at Gigafactory Texas with volume production planned for 2026, and said advances in FSD would unlock an unsupervised option for customers and the Robotaxi business, which Tesla expected to begin launching in parts of the U.S. later in 2025. On the call Musk named Austin as the first city, with a June target.

Tesla's third-quarter shareholder deck, filed as an 8-K exhibit, said the Cybercab and Robovan were designed from the ground up for autonomy and that Cybercab would use a new powertrain rated at about 5.5 miles per kWh and the unboxed manufacturing method. On the call Musk said he hoped to open a ride-hailing service in California and Texas in 2025 and that employees were already hailing supervised cars in the Bay Area.

At the We, Robot event on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, Tesla showed 20 Cybercab prototypes with butterfly doors, inductive charging and no steering wheel or pedals, plus a 20-passenger Robovan and Optimus robots. Musk said the Cybercab would cost under $30,000 to buy and about 20 cents a mile to run, promised unsupervised FSD for Model 3 and Model Y in Texas and California in 2025, and said Cybercab production would start in 2026 or before 2027.

Musk confirmed a Bloomberg report that the August 8 event was being delayed to October, saying he had requested an important design change to the front of the vehicle and that the extra time would let Tesla show off a few other things. Shares had fallen more than 6 percent on the initial report.

After Reuters reported that Tesla had dropped its low-cost EV to concentrate on a robotaxi built on the same platform, Musk called the report a lie and then posted that a Tesla Robotaxi would be unveiled on August 8. Weeks later he cut more than a tenth of the workforce and said the company was going all in on autonomy.

On the first-quarter 2022 earnings call Musk said Tesla would bring a dedicated robotaxi, optimised for autonomy and without a steering wheel or pedals, to volume production in 2024, and that rides would cost less than a subsidised bus ticket. He conceded that full self-driving had produced more false dawns than any technology he had worked on.

Two days after Autonomy Day, Tesla's first-quarter shareholder letter, filed with the SEC, said the new FSD computer and fleet-trained software would make its vehicles fully autonomous through software updates, subject to regulatory approval, so owners and Tesla could earn income on a ride-hailing network. It described a custom robotaxi built to run about a million miles on one battery pack at a production cost below $38,000.

At Tesla's Autonomy Investor Day, Elon Musk said the company would launch a ride-hailing network in 2020 in which owners could add their cars and Tesla would run its own dedicated fleet, taking 25 to 30 percent of fares. He predicted over a million robotaxis on the road within about a year, enabled by an over-the-air update to cars carrying Tesla's new self-driving computer. None of that happened on that schedule.