Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA), on Saturday, announced it had reached a major Robotaxi milestone in Austin, marking a rapid expansion of the Elon Musk-led automaker’s Robotaxi service.
An 8x Increase in Cybercab Fleet
In a post on the social media platform X, the official Robotaxi handle announced that Tesla had expanded its Cybercab fleet to “300+ Cybercabs serving Austin.” The company touted that the expansion was “an 8x increase in 30 days.” Quoting the post on Sunday, the Tesla CEO hailed the expansion. “Cybercab is scaling,” Musk said in his post.
Musk, earlier this month, said that a challenge for the Robotaxi service’s operations remained poor visibility in darker conditions at night as the service stretched its operations window from 10:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. “The main thing we’re trying to solve is making sure that we don’t run over pets,” like little kittens, during nighttime, Musk said.
Unlike its competitors like Alphabet Inc.‘s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) Waymo, WeRide Inc. (NASDAQ:WRD) and others that rely on LiDAR sensors as well as cameras, Tesla prioritizes a vision-only approach to self-driving, with Musk having expressed skepticism about LiDAR technology on several occasions in the past.
Tesla Drops Full Self-Driving Name in Europe
The expansion comes as Tesla dropped the Full Self-Driving (FSD) Supervised name from its official channels and communications in Europe after it received pushback from the authorities in Germany, after the latter said that the name could mislead customers. The company now calls the Supervised FSD “Tesla Assisted Driving.”
Notably, last week, Tesla CEO Musk hailed the German Transport Minister Steffen Bilger‘s comments, appealing to other European countries to approve the FSD technology. “Danke Schön!” Musk said.
Price Action: TSLA shares rose 0.09% to $383.03 during pre-market trading on Monday.
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