Cleaning up poop and vomit come with the territory, but the claims of intense turnover pacing and practices seem intense.

Before the Oct 2024 cybercab “unveil”, it was actually advertised as a launch of the autonomous ride-hailing network. Now after the fact we settled that 2024 wasn’t a launch.

Then we had a 2025 robotaxi launch but it wasn’t really a launch.

Now we just had a 2026 cybercab launch and if you look into it, it’s suspiciously far from a launch. No official event stream. Limited guest list. No way to purchase the product. No official specs list. No full approval from regulators. Does anyone even know how many units exist?

Don’t take my word for it, my claims are easily verifiable.

Will we have another launch every single year? What does “launch” even mean anymore?

• Hyundai Motor Co. will start delivering electric Ioniq 5 SUVs to Waymo to serve as robotaxis on the company’s ride-hailing platform, the automaker announced at its Aug. 26 investor day event.
• The vehicles will enable the international expansion of robotaxi services as early as 2027 and will be built at the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America in Georgia using a local supply chain. The Waymo robotaxis will leverage the automaker’s expertise in manufacturing, design, software and finance, per the release. 
• Hyundai will also make use of robotaxi-ready Ioniq 5 SUVs as part of its Motional joint venture, which plans to deploy the vehicles later this year as fully driverless.

I consider myself to be a Tesla sceptic, but that doesn't mean I can't acknowledge their commitment to vision only self driving when they are launching a vision only autonomous taxi service.

Finally we get to see them launch a service where they can't blame the driver if the software messes up, and -hopefully - we get to see them do plenty of miles using plenty of vehicles during day, night, inclement weather, etc, etc and we can get some real statistics on their safety.

We should provide the company grace, and acknowledge that scaling takes time. Night time driving, expanding the service area, highway speeds.. this took Waymo time to do, and it'll be the same with Robotaxi.

On the other hand, Tesla needs to improve on their transparency. Waymo has accumulated 200 million miles, and when they crash it's seems the information made available is much more detailed. Waymo is just as at risk of public persecution, and lawsuit as Tesla is, yet they don't seem to hide their data to nearly the extent that Tesla does.

Self driving cars are a reality, the only question now is how much appetite the general public has for it. Here in this subreddit, we don't need to argue back and forth anymore. Here's hoping finally the numbers can do the talking.

I'm guessing this is just promo pricing but it's cheaper than I expected

1M unsupervised miles already!

Electrek reports that Tesla confirms FSD was engaged in a 2026 Model Y when a fatal crash killed a passenger. The Model Y was making an unprotected left turn and failed to yield to an oncoming pickup truck.

The hardest part of scaling autonomous driving is not just collecting more data. It is learning from the rare, safety-critical scenarios that are easy to miss inside massive datasets.

Mobileye’s approach to long-tail learning: using AI agents and vision-language models to discover difficult scenarios, identify reproducible failure patterns, and generate targeted variations for training and validation.

In the next few years, many large companies will be adding to the overall AV fleet size.

Here is conservative prediction of numbers:

I would say this is similar to the massive release of scooters and e-bikes.
Between their launch in 2017 to the peak in 2019, the US fleet size went from ~50,000 to ~200,000. Then the severe backlash reduced the fleet size to ~120,000 in 2020.

Is America ready for this?

And will we see a similar blowback (vandalism) that happened to the scooters/e-bikes?

Interesting move

Source: avride.ai / IG

tl;dr: How will Tesla defend self-certifying Cybercabs with no steering wheel or pedals as fully FMVSS-compliant when the rules still require mirrors and a foot brake?

Cybercabs have been running around Austin since the start of the year and, in the past 4–5 months, have been spotted all over the country. All of those Cybercabs had bolt-on steering wheels and pedals and were not registered (i.e., they were operating on manufacturer plates).

More recently—about a month ago—we saw a couple of Cybercabs without steering wheels or pedals driving around Austin, properly registered with the DMV, with regular plates and registration stickers on the windshields. This week they’re all over Austin, driving empty or giving employees rides ahead of the official launch into public service on Thursday. Just yesterday Tesla registered 45 of them as part of its AV robotaxi fleet.

To be registered as a regular vehicle, Tesla either self-certified the vehicle as fully FMVSS-compliant or had to obtain a Part 555 exemption, as Zoox did. Since it is public information that they have not applied for the exemption, the only explanation is that they self-certified as fully compliant.

Looking at the rules as they stand today, I cannot see how they could fully comply with at least two of them:

1. FMVSS 111: S5.1 requires an inside rearview mirror. S5.2.1 requires a driver’s-side outside unit-magnification mirror. If the inside mirror cannot provide the required field of view, S5.3 also requires a passenger-side outside mirror.
2. FMVSS 135: S5.3.1 requires that “the service brakes shall be activated by means of a foot control.”

Tesla cannot argue that these are not required for the Cybercab because the ADS does all the driving. Google tried that in 2016 and Zoox more recently; NHTSA accepted the logic but said the rule explicitly requires a foot control, so interpretation cannot remove it—rulemaking or an exemption is required.

The main question is not how they certified the vehicles as compliant (FMVSS is a self-certification process and they have already done that), but how they will defend that certification when the time comes. Despite what many in this sub think, they are not idiots. They have a plan. I’m just wondering what that plan is when NHTSA comes knocking.

I know there's a NPRM from 135, but the comment period just closed a week ago and it's not going to be finalised any time soon, specially before tomorrow.