TL;DR
A car with no driver that will pick people up at 3 a.m. is a different thing from one that only works at lunchtime. Tesla says its robotaxis now run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in all eight cities where it drives without a supervisor: Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas, Miami, Orlando and Tampa. The announcement came from Tesla's own robotaxi account and reached us through a news report, so it is a company claim, relayed secondhand, with no night-time safety numbers attached. It still matters for anyone who works a late shift, flies a red-eye or leaves a party after the buses stop: night is the hardest driving for a camera-only system, and a car that can work through it can earn money around the clock, which is what turns a fleet of robotaxis into a business. The same day, Zoox, Amazon's robotaxi built with no steering wheel at all, said it had taken its Las Vegas rides beyond the Strip. Our odds on when Tesla reaches ten round-the-clock cities, and on the next steps for Cybercab and owner cars, are below the line; to see them and the timeline of breakthroughs that leads there, subscribe.
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