Tesla’s robotaxis now offer rides in Austin for an hour longer. The company is extending the hours while still working to avoid hitting pets on the road after dark.
Austin residents can now book Tesla’s robotaxi rides one hour later than usual. As CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X, the driverless taxi platform now offers rides in the city until 11 pm, instead of 10 pm.
Robotaxi operating hours moved from 10pm to 11pm.
The main thing we’re trying to solve is making sure that we don’t run over pets when they’re hard to see at night. Literally trying to avoid grey kittens on grey tarmac in the dark. https://t.co/y4HSVILLqd
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
Robotaxi’s service hours have been a moving target. At launch, Tesla offered rides from 6 am till midnight. A few months later, in September 2025, the company extended availability to 2 am. However, Tesla scaled back to closing at 10 pm last August in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa.
Musk, however, touched on the reason for limiting robotaxi night service: pets. According to the company boss, Tesla is working on a solution to avoid hitting pets that stray onto the road at night.
Conventional knowledge is that nighttime vision can be improved by using lidar, which does not require light to work, unlike cameras. Autonomous taxi rival Waymo uses a combination of cameras, lidar, and radar. However, Musk’s aversion to lidar is well-documented, with statements such as “Lidar is a fool’s errand. Anyone relying on lidar is doomed.”
Musk doubled down on his choice of cameras in the replies when a commenter suggested using thermal cameras. Safe to say lidars may not appear on Teslas anytime soon. He stated that “Visual spectrum cameras can see very well in the dark when AI is doing the photon count analysis.”
Visual spectrum cameras can see very well in the dark when AI is doing the photon count analysis
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
Back in September, Tesla’s AI chief Ashok Elluswamy said Tesla would launch 24-hour driverless rides “around next month.” Musk’s latest announcement neither confirmed nor debunked Elluswamy’s timeline.
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