FLEET · Robotaxi
New Floor: Austin Cybercab Sightings Hold Near 560 After Festival Weekend
Spotters logged 557 Cybercab sightings in Austin on Tuesday, 416 of them driverless. That is up 50 percent on the prior Tuesday, and Robotaxi Radar called the driverless count the highest yet on a day without a festival in town.
Harper Quinn, Live desk
Published · 2 min read
AUSTIN, Texas - The festival crowds have gone home, and the Cybercabs have stayed on the street. CybercabSpotter, a crowd-sourced tracking account, logged 557 Cybercab sightings in Austin on Tuesday, 6 October. Of those, 416 were tagged driverless.
Robotaxi Radar, an X account that tracks Tesla's driverless rollout, said the numbers show "the weekday floor has moved up in Austin." Tuesday's total was up 50 percent from 371 a week earlier. The driverless count was up 68 percent from 248. Radar said 416 driverless sightings is the highest figure yet on a day without a festival in town.
It was the second weekday in a row near that level. On Monday, 5 October, CybercabSpotter logged 566 sightings, 389 of them driverless, as the first weekend of the Austin City Limits festival wrapped up. "Two weekdays in a row near 560, with no event in town shows a clean WoW increase in Cybercab presence," Radar wrote, using shorthand for week over week.
The driverless share held up as well. About 75 percent of Tuesday's sightings were tagged driverless, which Radar said was second only to the 77 percent logged on Saturday, 3 October.
That Saturday set the board's all-time high of 868 sightings during the festival weekend, followed by 821 on Sunday. Before that weekend, no day had topped 440, and the previous record was 438 on 27 September. The open question after the festival was whether the count would slide back toward September levels. Two days in, it has not. Monday and Tuesday both landed well above the old record.
Read the figures with care. A sighting is a report, not a car, and one Cybercab can be logged many times as it crosses town. The counts are not a Tesla fleet number, and Tesla does not publish how many Cybercabs it runs in Austin.
Riders are noticing the difference. On Tuesday night, Austin rider Gail Alfar posted a photo from a Robotaxi trip and wrote, "Check out the Cybercabs busy in the background."
Austin remains the only city where the public can pay for a Cybercab ride. The rest of this week's weekday counts will show whether about 560 is the new normal.
Harper Quinn covers Cybercab robotaxi launches, Austin fleet ops, and the day-to-day of street boards versus live hail. Based in Austin.
