Busy Monday for the car with no steering wheel. Here's what you need to know before your coffee gets cold. This is a roundup of coverage from TeslaNorth, an enthusiast site, with added reporting from Fortune, Teslarati and Not a Tesla App. We haven't independently confirmed the claims with Tesla, Delta or the Texas registry.
Tesla (TSLA) says it now has more than 300 Cybercabs serving Austin. That's an eightfold jump in 30 days, according to the company's own Robotaxi account on X, which posted "One month after launch, we've scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin, an 8x increase in 30 days," as relayed by TeslaNorth, Teslarati and Not a Tesla App. By that math, the fleet stood at roughly 40 cars a month ago, so the pace of growth is the real story here. It's a company claim, and it's the highest official count Tesla has given in public. Our full explainer on the service is here: Everything you need to know about Tesla's Robotaxi.
Dallas is next, but there's no date. Tesla's AI chief, Ashok Elluswamy, replied that Cybercabs are "everywhere in Austin now. Dallas soon." Dallas riders still get Model Y Robotaxis for now, and dozens of Cybercabs were spotted at the Dallas lot earlier this week. Nobody has put a launch date on Dallas, so treat "soon" as a hope, not a schedule.
Cybercab riders may soon get to look out the back window, digitally. A Tesla UI engineer replied "In development" when a rider asked for on-demand rear and repeater camera views on the cabin screen, per TeslaNorth. Today the screen shows a visualization of what the car sees, not the raw camera feed. With no driver and no mirrors, that's a handy peace-of-mind feature, though Tesla hasn't said when it ships or whether Model Y Robotaxis will get it.
Being on a state registry isn't the same as carrying riders. Texas records earlier this month showed authorized Cybercabs climbing from 169 to 319 after 150 new VINs were added, according to TeslaNorth's reading of those records, a count Teslarati also reported. Tesla's new post is its own claim about cars in the Austin fleet. Teslarati noted that community tracker RobotaxiTracker listed lower numbers in unsupervised service, so official counts may run ahead of public sightings. Still unanswered: how many of the 300-plus run without a safety monitor, and whether wait times changed.
The CEO of Delta Air Lines (DAL) drives a Tesla and still said no to Starlink. Ed Bastian told CNBC there's "no tit for tat" with Elon Musk, and called himself "a big fan of Starlink". He said the two sides had "disagreements on the business model in terms of access to the customer," and that SpaceX "just weren't ready to scale when we were ready to go". In plain terms, that's a dispute over who owns the relationship with the passenger. Delta signed in March to put Amazon's Leo satellite network on an initial 500 aircraft starting in 2028. Musk had said Delta "will lose a lot of customers". Meanwhile American Airlines and KLM picked Starlink, and United already flies it on more than 600 aircraft. Fortune's account also names American and United as Starlink users.
So what would make you step into a car with no driver: a rear camera view, or just a ride that shows up on time?
The WattsUpNext take: Tesla's Austin Cybercab fleet is growing fast by its own count, but the numbers that matter, like how many run with no monitor aboard, are still unpublished. Watch those, not the totals.
That's wattsup, and here's wattsnext: Chinese carmakers double Paris Motor Show presence as Europe counters with cheaper retro models
Sources
- 1.Tesla Scales Austin Cybercab Fleet to 300+ [Update] | TeslaNorth.com · TeslaNorth.com
- 2.Tesla Engineer Says Cybercab Rider Cameras Are Coming | TeslaNorth.com · TeslaNorth.com
- 3.Delta CEO Says He Drives a Tesla, Explains Why Delta Passed on Starlink | TeslaNorth.com · TeslaNorth.com
- 4.Delta CEO Ed Bastian says there's 'no tit for tat' with Elon Musk as earnings miss · Fortune
- 5.Tesla's Cybercab fleet jumped 8x in a month, with Dallas up next · Teslarati
- 6.Tesla Now Has 300+ Cybercabs in Austin, Dallas Rides Next · Not a Tesla App
Reported by the WattsUpNext desk from the sources linked below. Spot an error? Tell us at corrections@wattsupnext.com.
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