Tesla's Robotaxi fleet might finally be driving around Austin unsupervised - Engadget

This comes just ahead of the Cybercab launch. Tesla appears to have finally allowed its Robotaxi fleet in Austin to go full driverless, according to a report by The Verge. It looks like all vehicles in the city are operating autonomously. This is many months after Elon Musk announced that they had begun operating without human safety monitors onboard. He also said that the entire fleet would remove safety drivers by, well, the end of 2025. Better late than never? This news isn't coming from Musk or anyone from Tesla, which gives it more credence. The information comes from a crowdsourced web app called Robotaxi Tracker. The site's creator, Ethan McKanna, told The Verge that all 170 Tesla Robotaxi rides in Austin monitored by the app in the past two weeks were unsupervised, which involved 54 different vehicles. This is further corroborated by folks on social media. New Tesla robotaxi license plate in Austin. This is the 94th unsupervised one pic.twitter.com/4IBToRcQZr — Abhimanyu Yadav (@WorldlyReviewer) August 18, 2026 McKanna has also noticed an increase in unsurprised Robotaxi rides in other cities, such as Dallas and Houston. This is all a big change from earlier this summer, wh