Tesla has almost quadrupled its authorized Cybercab fleet in Texas after a mixed first month in Austin, and the harder test is scaling that driverless service without losing public trust.
In the month since its Sept. 3 rollout in Austin, Tesla has pushed the number of its driverless, bronze two-seat Cybercabs authorized for commercial service in Texas from 45 to 169, CNBC reported, citing Texas Department of Motor Vehicles public records.
Austin remains the only city where Tesla currently runs the Cybercab as a driverless ride-hail product. The company is already looking past that beachhead to San Antonio, Dallas, other Texas cities, Nevada, and Florida, states noted for warm weather and friendlier rules.
That growth matters because Tesla’s core car business has been under pressure. Shares were down 18% this year and stood out as the only megacap tech name that had failed to deliver positive returns for investors. On Friday the company posted better-than-expected third-quarter vehicle deliveries, lifting the stock nearly 5%, though deliveries still fell 2% year over year.
Improving driverless technology and growing the Robotaxi service are central to the push to restore investor enthusiasm. Elon Musk has framed robotaxis as the next leap for the company, and the market is watching whether the Austin experiment can travel.
Texas DMV figures show the scale of the early buildout. Tesla went from 45 authorized Cybercabs at the Austin unveiling to 169 as of Friday. The broader Robotaxi fleet in Texas also includes 420 Model Y vehicles running Tesla’s automated driving systems that are not yet available to individual car buyers.
Those numbers look different next to the competition. Alphabet’s Waymo had 1,154 autonomous vehicles authorized for commercial use in Texas as of Friday, including 359 of its new Ojai models. Waymo says it operates in 15 U.S. markets with 15 more on the horizon, runs more than 500,000 paid rides every week, has logged 270 million fully autonomous commercial miles in the U.S., and fields more than 4,000 driverless vehicles in commercial operations nationwide.
Amazon’s Zoox is testing in Austin as well. Tesla still has not obtained California permits to run vehicles on public roads without a human at the wheel, a gap that leaves Waymo freer in several West Coast cities while Tesla leans on Texas.
Cantor analysts, writing after the Friday deliveries report, pointed back to management’s own ambition for the new vehicle.
"Management previously said that once production ramps, it expects Cybercab to ultimately be the largest volume vehicle in its lineup,"
the analysts wrote. That goal only works if production, regulation, and rider comfort all move in the same direction.
The same deliveries news that briefly lifted the stock has been covered in our own reporting on how Tesla stock jumped after the beat, with investors still weighing the auto numbers against the AI and robotaxi story.
Early passenger feedback has been mixed. Paying riders shared videos and posts about long waits, wrong pickups and drop-offs, and technical trouble with butterfly doors or trunks that did not close cleanly. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ethan McKanna, a 20-year-old Texas A&M computer science sophomore, former Tesla intern, and creator of RobotaxiTracker.com, has taken about 30 Cybercab rides and has used every autonomous service available to the public in Austin. He has also ridden Waymo since its 2024 debut there.
McKanna praised the cabin and the drive.
"own space with access to a massive screen, media controls and apps,"
he said, calling the drive quality “very smooth.” He was less impressed with the curb experience. The “pick up, drop-off experience” is not yet refined, he said, and butterfly doors that swing out are “less convenient” than traditional or sliding doors.
Demand at launch was intense.
"There was so much demand that wait times were often like 45 minutes plus,"
McKanna said. Those waits eased in recent weeks as demand “equalized.” He still gives Waymo the edge on maturity: longer commercial operations, 24/7 service, and stronger support, though he recalled harsh braking in Waymo’s early Austin days.
No significant safety incidents or collisions involving a Cybercab have been reported in Austin since commercial service began. That clean public record is useful. It is not the same thing as settled public confidence.
After the Cybercab launch, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration started an audit query to check compliance with federal safety standards. The agency originally ordered Tesla to answer a long list of safety questions by Sept. 30. An agency spokesperson told CNBC by email that Tesla obtained an extension.
The Cybercab design itself is part of the regulatory friction. The two-seaters have no steering wheel, pedals, rear or sideview mirrors, or outside door handles. Butterfly doors handle entry. That is the product bet: a purpose-built robotaxi, not a regular car with the driver seat empty.
Austin Fire Captain Matt McElearney told CNBC that Tesla gave first responders detailed emergency guidelines and thorough instruction on the Cybercab and Model Y Robotaxi. He said that still falls short of what public safety needs.
"public safety representatives to take control, move, steer, or shut down an AV, in both emergent or non-emergent events."
McElearney wants robotaxis without wheels or pedals to offer some other way for responders to take command. He also argued that autonomous vehicles should “pass testing through the entire lifespan of the product” under a “dynamic certification” process, preferably through national or state rules rather than company briefings alone.
Those are practical demands from people who will meet these cars at wrecks, fires, and medical calls. They are not abstract talking points.
Musk’s wider portfolio often draws the same mix of capital bets and skepticism, including recent pressure campaigns where short sellers piled against SpaceX and drew a direct response from him.
Slingshot Strategies’ September 2026 Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report put numbers on the comfort gap. Fifty percent of U.S. respondents said they would not feel comfortable riding in a robotaxi without a steering wheel or pedals. After hearing about the NHTSA inquiry into Tesla’s Cybercab, 70% wanted the company to pause rides.
That is the soft barrier sitting behind the hard one. Authorization counts can rise. Wait times can fall. A survey majority that wants the brakes pumped is a different problem, and it travels with the product into every new city.
In January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Musk said robotaxis would be “very, very widespread” in the U.S. by the end of 2026. That has not happened yet. Austin is a start, not a national network.
Chinese EV makers BYD and Xiaomi are selling more affordable, innovative models while Tesla ramps exports to key markets in Europe and Asia. The auto business is not waiting for robotaxis to finish proving themselves. The robotaxi bet still has to carry weight on its own.
Musk’s name continues to surface in other large capital stories as well, including reports that David Ellison has eyed him as a possible equity partner in a major Hollywood merger fight, another reminder that the same executive is being asked to deliver on several fronts at once.
Tesla’s next step is geographic. San Antonio and Dallas are the near-term Texas targets. Nevada and Florida are on the map for climate and regulatory reasons. Waymo is already planning international launches in London, Tokyo, and Munich while holding a multi-thousand-vehicle U.S. footprint.
The Cybercab’s first month showed rapid authorization growth, real rider interest, and unfinished product edges, doors, waits, pickup precision, and first-responder control. NHTSA’s open questions hang over the file even with an extension in hand. Public surveys show a large share of Americans still want a wheel in the car, or a pause button on the whole experiment.
Private companies should be free to build and compete. Regulators should ask concrete safety questions and publish clear standards. Riders will decide with their feet and their phones. The scoreboard is not a press event in downtown Austin. It is whether these cars work at scale, in more cities, under ordinary weather and ordinary scrutiny, without turning every deployment into a political hostage drama.
Texas gave Tesla room to try. Now the company has to turn a larger authorized fleet into a service people trust, and regulators cannot bury with paperwork what engineers can prove on the road.