❯ Tesla extends Austin Robotaxi hours to 11 p.m., and Musk says the night-time problem is seeing pets on the road

One more hourTesla has extended the end of Robotaxi service in Austin from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. Musk explained on X: “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.” (Drive Tesla Canada)

Cameras onlyTesla’s approach does not use lidar, while Waymo uses cameras, lidar and radar together. Musk says visual spectrum cameras can see very well in the dark when AI is doing the “photon count analysis.” According to BigGo Finance, Tesla’s owner’s manual acknowledges that unlit or poorly lit roads at night limit camera accuracy.

Regulators and an earlier incidentNational Highway Traffic Safety Administration records show that in September 2025 a Model Y on Robotaxi duty in Austin struck a dog that ran into an intersection. The vehicle slowed and steered left, and the dog then ran away. In March this year the agency upgraded its investigation of Tesla FSD in low visibility to an engineering analysis covering about 3.2 million vehicles and nine crashes (Jalopnik).

How far from round-the-clockAccording to Not a Tesla App, Tesla added 111 Cybercabs in Austin in two weeks, bringing the fleet to 169, and is targeting 24/7 operation as early as this month. Adding one hour at a time shows its caution about night driving. Whether a vision-only system can reliably spot small animals in the dark will directly decide when that target is met.

▪ SIGNALThe last thing autonomous driving has to crack is not the highway but a grey cat on a street late at night, and that is where the ceiling of the vision-only approach gets tested.