OPINION · Opinion
Twenty Rides, Twenty Cabs: Cybercab Already Feels Like a Utility
Dirty Tesla took 20 Cybercab rides in Austin and never got the same car twice. Surge pricing is the one rough edge, and it is the kind more cars will smooth out.
Harper Quinn, Opinion, Live desk
Published · 2 min read
AUSTIN, Texas - Twenty rides. Twenty different Cybercabs. That is the number from Dirty Tesla's week in Austin that should stick.
Dirty Tesla, the Michigan-based YouTuber who posts as @DirtyTesLa, shared his numbers on Wednesday: about 69 miles and roughly four hours and 20 minutes in the car across 20 rides, each in a different Cybercab. His ride chart, covering Oct. 7 to Oct. 11, says all 20 rides were operated by unmanned Cybercabs.
Think about what that means. A rider who never gets the same car twice is not riding a demo. He is riding a fleet deep enough that the car itself stops being memorable, the way nobody remembers which elevator they took. That is what a utility feels like, and it is exactly how a robotaxi should feel. Harry Campbell, founder of The Driverless Digest, caught the same depth on Wednesday with a photo from inside one Cybercab, following another.
The numbers behind that depth keep climbing. CybercabSpotter counted 682 Cybercab sightings in Austin on Tuesday, 490 of them driverless, and Robotaxi Radar said the total was up 22 percent from the Tuesday before. Tesla says more than 300 Cybercabs serve the city, and Texas records now list 349 Cybercabs.
The rough edge is price. Dirty Tesla wrote that surge pricing is intense: a $13.73 ride turned into $30.98 for the trip back. Robotaxi Radar, working through his data, put his average at $4.46 a mile, with a high of $23.20 and a low of $1.86. During Wednesday's afternoon rush, Radar's own check found a Cybercab at $21.53 with a 10-minute wait, against $19.94 and 12 minutes for UberX.
Here is the case for patience. Surge is what happens when more riders want a Cybercab than there are free cars at that minute. That is a demand problem, the best kind to have, and it comes with a known cure. "Supply is needed to flatten fares further," Robotaxi Radar wrote. Tesla is supplying: its latest Texas registration update added 30 more Cybercabs.
Twenty rides in twenty different cabs says the hard part, building a fleet people use without thinking about it, is already working. The price spikes are the riders telling Giga Texas to keep the line moving.
