Hit From Behind: Truck Rear-Ends a Stopped Tesla Cybercab Live on Twitch

AUSTIN, Texas - A driverless Tesla Cybercab was hit from behind by a truck around midday on Saturday while it sat stopped on a highway frontage road, and the passenger was livestreaming the whole thing. The streamer, who goes by Sketch on Twitch, was in the left-hand seat of the two-seat cab when a loud thud jolted him and his companion forward.

Within seconds the Cybercab's centre screen switched to a rear camera view showing the grille of the truck right behind it, with a short message underneath: "Vehicle stopped, your ride will end once you exit." Sketch, still in his Texas Longhorns jersey, worked out how to open the cab's upward-swinging door and spoke with the truck's driver through the opening.

Clips of the stream spread quickly on X overnight. Aryan Butala, who posts about Tesla's robotaxi service, cut the most important moments of what he said was a nearly hour-long episode into a clip of about three and a half minutes. His post drew more than 14,000 views by early Sunday, UK time. A shorter cut shared by the clip account @ilySalt passed 13,000 views, and a post by @yoxics, an account with more than 700,000 followers, passed 45,000.

The clip shows Tesla's remote support taking over the scene. A support agent came on over the cabin audio after a pause. "Hi, I'm speaking to my manager right now. We're gonna get things handled," she said. "Before I say anything, I'm just gonna make sure that I'm giving you the right information." She told the riders to stand by: "We're gonna have somebody also come out there for y'all." She also checked on them. "I do also want to make sure you guys are okay before I continue," she said. Nobody in the clip appears to be hurt.

Then the car moved. "We're gonna be moving the car to a better location for you guys," the agent said. "I really apologize for this inconvenience." The Cybercab pulled out of the turn lane and drove on by itself, and the agent said she had the riders "going in the general same area, just not close to the highway." A later shot outside the car shows the damage: a small crack in the black trim along the light bar at the back of the gold cab.

Butala, who watched the full stream, wrote that Tesla also sent a rapid response worker to the scene and that Sketch said the company "did a great job at handling the situation." Sketch had one suggestion, Butala wrote: let riders roll down a window, so they do not have to open the door in traffic to talk to the other driver.

Robotaxi Radar, an account that tracks Tesla's driverless service, put the incident plainly. It was "still not an at-fault incident," the account wrote, since the Cybercab was stopped when it was struck. Not every viewer was fully satisfied. One Tesla fan counted about seven and a half minutes from the impact until the car was rolling again, and urged Tesla to keep improving the handoff.

Austin is the only city where the public can ride in Tesla's purpose-built Cybercab, and the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles list shows 349 of them. Federal crash data updated on Thursday showed no Cybercab crash in the first weeks of public rides. Earlier this month, a Cybercab lost an outer door panel in a low-speed collision in Philadelphia, and the frame underneath held.

Tesla had not commented on Saturday's collision by early Sunday, UK time. Its Robotaxi account had not posted about it, and neither had Elon Musk.

For anyone wondering what happens when a robotaxi gets hit with nobody at the wheel, Sketch's stream now offers a public answer: the car stops, shows the riders what is behind them, puts a person on the line and then moves itself out of harm's way.