As Tesla pushed back the end time of its robotaxi service operating in Austin, Texas, by one hour to 11 p.m., Elon Musk, CEO, said the company’s current technical core challenge is “avoiding unseen pets on dark night roads.”
Key point:
Tesla’s Austin robotaxi service has extended its operating end time from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m., adding one more hour.
Musk said the problem of detecting pets on dark roads is a key challenge the company must solve right now.
U.S. federal regulators are separately investigating how Tesla’s driving software performs in low-visibility conditions.
Changes to Tesla Robotaxi Operating Hours
Musk posted on social media platform X that the Austin robotaxi service’s operating hours had been extended from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. He reposted a company announcement, reiterating the expansion of nighttime service on Austin routes.
In another statement, Musk said, “The most important thing we’re trying to solve is not hitting pets when they’re hard to see at night,” adding, “We’re literally solving the problem of avoiding a ‘gray cat on dark asphalt.’”
After years of delays, Tesla launched its robotaxi service in Austin in June 2025, and has since expanded it to other Texas cities and Florida. At launch, Austin routes operated until midnight, but they now run only until 11 p.m., an hour earlier.
Tesla says its robotaxis drive autonomously using cameras and various sensors, while the vehicle manual states that camera-based recognition may be limited on unlit roads or in low-light conditions. Musk has emphasized software as the solution, telling one user, “Visible-light cameras can see extremely well in dark environments if AI analyzes photon counts.”
More: Chainalysis links $387 million Bitget hack to North Korea, traces flow from XRP to Bitcoin
Comparison with Waymo’s Lidar
Critics say Tesla’s limitations are nothing new. At this time of year, sunset in Austin is just after 7 p.m., meaning the vehicles still drive for several hours each day in complete darkness.
Fred Lambert, editor-in-chief of electric-vehicle news outlet Electrek, noted in an opinion piece, “Cameras need light and contrast to distinguish objects, but a gray animal on a dark road has neither.”
He explained that lidar is unaffected by lighting conditions because it emits its own laser pulses to create detailed maps of objects, adding that Waymo equips its vehicles, which operate 24 hours a day, with a combination of lidar, cameras, and radar.
Tesla removed radar from its vehicles in 2021 and has never sold a vehicle equipped with lidar.
However, neither approach has completely prevented collisions with animals. Last October in San Francisco, a Waymo vehicle struck and killed a 9-year-old cat named KitKat, and in September 2025, a Tesla robotaxi hit a dog in Austin. The company reported to regulators that the dog ran off after the collision.
Musk’s Claims About Night-Vision Technology
Musk has publicly disparaged lidar for years. In April 2019, he called it “a fool’s errand,” and this May he posted examples of camera footage to show why Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software can “see well even at night or in conditions with extreme glare.”
Meanwhile, federal regulators are conducting a separate investigation into how FSD performs in low-visibility conditions—including sun glare, fog, and airborne dust—across about 3.2 million Tesla vehicles. The agency escalated the investigation in March this year following nine crashes, one of them fatal.
Read next: iPhone 18 Pro Max plagued by dropped-call controversy on AT&T; Apple says software update can’t fix it