Tesla's Robotaxi fleet might finally be driving around Austin unsupervised

Tesla appears to have finally allowed its Robotaxi fleet in Austin to go full driverless, according to a report by The Verge. It looks like all vehicles in the city are operating autonomously. This is many months after Elon Musk announced that they had begun operating without human safety monitors onboard. He also said that the entire fleet would remove safety drivers by, well, the end of 2025. Better late than never?

This news isn't coming from Musk or anyone from Tesla, which gives it more credence. The information comes from a crowdsourced web app called Robotaxi Tracker. The site's creator, Ethan McKanna, told The Verge that all 170 Tesla Robotaxi rides in Austin monitored by the app in the past two weeks were unsupervised, which involved 54 different vehicles. This is further corroborated by folks on social media. 

New Tesla robotaxi license plate in Austin. This is the 94th unsupervised one pic.twitter.com/4IBToRcQZr

— Abhimanyu Yadav (@WorldlyReviewer) August 18, 2026

McKanna has also noticed an increase in unsurprised Robotaxi rides in other cities, such as Dallas and Houston. This is all a big change from earlier this summer, when the unsupervised fleet appeared to actually be shrinking. The app showed just 28 unsupervised vehicles across six markets as recently as last week.

However, the company isn't beyond smoke and mirrors when it comes to this kind of thing. It was revealed earlier this year that some Robotaxi rides that appeared to be unsupervised were actually connected to remote human drivers.

This is happening just ahead of the launch of the Tesla Cybercab. The company has told employees it's gearing for a release sometime this month, with an initial rollout in Austin. The company also announced a contest where a lucky few Robotaxi riders will be selected to attend the event, which doesn't have a publicly-announced date just yet. This is Tesla's purpose-built autonomous vehicle that doesn't even have pedals or a steering wheel, which means that it couldn't have human supervision.

It's also worth noting that this increase in autonomous rides may be an important milestone for Tesla, but it's just a blip in the overall industry. Waymo, for instance, operates more than 300 driverless vehicles in Austin, with about 4,000 vehicles running in numerous other cities.