Early Bird: Tesla Robotaxi Now Runs From 5 A.M. To 2 A.M.

Tesla's Robotaxi clock just moved again. The app now lists operating hours as 5 a.m. to 2 a.m., a 21-hour day that starts one hour earlier than the window riders have had since late October.

Ethan McKanna, who has tracked each of the recent hour changes on X, posted a screenshot early on Sunday of the familiar "Outside operating hours" banner. This time it read "5am-2am" rather than "6am-2am," with the line "Please come back later" beneath it. Sawyer Merritt wrote that Tesla's Robotaxi service "now runs 21 hours a day from 5 AM to 2 AM (from 6 AM to 2 AM before)," adding: "Getting very close to 24-hour operation."

Tesla's official accounts had not posted about the change by Sunday afternoon, UK time. Neither the main Tesla account, the Robotaxi account nor Elon Musk mentioned the extra hour. The same pattern held when the service first stretched to midnight in mid October: the app moved first, and Tesla's own channels lagged.

The hour is the latest step in a fast march. Austin Robotaxi ran until midnight from mid October, then to 1 a.m., then to 2 a.m. at the end of October, when Tesla's Robotaxi account itself announced a 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. day. Sunday's change chips the other end of the night, leaving a three-hour gap from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. Tesla has not said when, or whether, it will fill that last stretch.

The screenshots do not name a city, and Tesla has not said which markets received the 5 a.m. start. Abhimanyu Yadav, an Austin rider who posts daily checks as WorldlyReviewer, wrote that "Tesla robotaxi now starts at 5 am" and that the service was "literally 3 hrs left to go 24x7." Earlier hour changes typically showed up first in Austin, then in other unsupervised cities.

The streets behind the new clock are busy. Cybercab Spotter, the crowd-sourced tracker, logged a record 2,167 Cybercab sightings in Austin on Saturday, 2,106 of them driverless. That tops the Halloween record of 1,576 sightings and 1,493 driverless rides. A sighting is a report, not a unique car, and one Cybercab can be counted many times as it crosses town.

For riders, the extra hour covers an earlier airport run, a dawn shift or the first coffee of the day. Tesla has not promised 24-hour service on a date. The app, for now, says the cars are back at 5 a.m.