Race weekend was the Cybercab's biggest public test yet. Tesla's gold two-seat Cybercabs and Model Y Robotaxis lined the roads around Circuit of the Americas for the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix in Austin. "Robotaxis as far as the eye can see!" Tesla AI software VP Ashok Elluswamy wrote on X, sharing a photo of a long line of them near the track.
What Tesla changed
- Late on Oct. 22, without an announcement, Tesla added a southeastern pocket around COTA, which is about 15 miles from downtown, to its Austin map, Teslarati and EV.com reported.
- For nearby drop-offs, last call moved to 1 a.m. It had been midnight since Oct. 17 and 11 p.m. as recently as early October.
- Some spots, like COTA Karting, showed as "Service blocked." One rider said the rideshare area was less than a 20-minute walk from the front gate.
The numbers
- 1,250 Cybercab sightings on Saturday, qualifying day. That's a record, beating 1,072 on Oct. 16. Of those, 1,159 had no one in the driver's seat (Cybercab Spotter, via EV.com).
- Sightings count the same car more than once, so they measure activity, not fleet size. The Texas automated-vehicle registry listed 463 Cybercabs at midday Sunday among 970 Tesla robotaxis, per EV.com.
- Tesla hasn't said how many rides it gave to or from the circuit, or whether the bigger zone and 1 a.m. cutoff will stay.
Waymo runs in Austin only through Uber, and its service area stops well short of COTA, Teslarati noted. The weekend comes days before Tesla's Oct. 30 deadline to answer NHTSA's questions about how it self-certified the Cybercab.
