Four Figures: Austin Cybercab Sightings Top 1,000 Two Days Running

AUSTIN, Texas - For the first time, Austin's Cybercab count has gone into four figures, and it stayed there. Community trackers logged 1,072 sightings of Tesla's purpose-built robotaxi around the city on Friday, an all-time high, and followed it with 1,020 on Saturday.

The figures come from Cybercab Spotter, an account that tallies the two-seat cabs seen on Austin streets each day, and from Robotaxi Radar, which breaks the numbers down. On Friday, 921 of the 1,072 sightings showed nobody in the driver's seat. On Saturday, 889 of 1,020 did.

That driverless share is the number that keeps moving. It reached 87 percent on Saturday, a new high for the third day in a row, after 85 percent on Thursday and 86 percent on Friday. Robotaxi Radar summed it up in one line: "Another record day for Robotaxi."

The jump is clearest against the old mark. The previous record was 912 sightings on Saturday, 10 October, a day swelled by Tesla's X Takeover event and the Austin City Limits music festival. This Saturday, with no festival in town, the total ran 12 percent higher and the driverless count 16 percent higher.

The trend is plain on Robotaxi Radar's chart of daily counts. Through the second half of September, daily totals never reached 450. Since the start of October they have rarely fallen below 500, and the last two days stand well above everything before them.

The trackers are careful about what the numbers mean. A sighting is logged each time a Cybercab is spotted, so the same car can be counted more than once in a day. The totals measure how often the cabs are out on the road, not how many exist. For the size of the fleet, the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles list now shows 349 Cybercabs registered in the state.

Saturday's total was 5 percent below Friday's peak, which Robotaxi Radar read as volume easing slightly even as the mix kept shifting toward empty driver's seats. Tesla also stretched its Austin service this week so that rides now run until midnight, giving the cabs more hours on the road each day.

The next test is close. Formula 1 comes to the Circuit of the Americas starting Friday, and Robotaxi Radar noted that this week's weekday counts will be the last clean readings before another major event fills the city. For now, the gold cabs have set a new bar, and most of them are crossing it with no one at the wheel.