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868 in One Day: Austin's Cybercab Sightings Just Doubled the Record
A crowd-sourced tracker logged 868 Cybercab sightings in Austin on Saturday, 670 of them tagged driverless. The previous high was 438.
Riley Cho, Features writer, Live desk
Published · 2 min read
AUSTIN, Texas - Here is a number worth knowing: 868. That is how many Cybercab sightings CybercabSpotter, a crowd-sourced tracking account, logged in Austin on Saturday, 3 October. Of those, 670 were tagged driverless.
Robotaxi Radar, which follows the same data, put the figure in context. The total was about twice the previous record of 438, set on 27 September. The driverless count was about 2.5 times the old high of 272, set on 26 September. The driverless share reached 77 percent, up from a previous peak of 70 percent.
The tracker's chart shows how sharply the line bent. Through most of September, daily sightings sat in the low hundreds. They climbed late in the month, then jumped on the first Saturday of October.
Read the number with care. A sighting is a report, not a car. The same Cybercab can be logged many times in a day as it crosses town, so 868 sightings does not mean 868 vehicles. Saturday also fell on an Austin City Limits festival weekend, when ride demand across the city runs high.
The direction is still clear. More Cybercabs are showing up on Austin streets, and a larger share of them are being logged as driverless. Austin remains the only city where riders can pay for a Cybercab trip.
Riley Cho covers Cybercab product details and the numbers behind the rollout. Based in Austin.
