Tesla Robotaxi surpasses 4 million autonomous miles, now runs until 2 AM

Tesla’s Robotaxi service now runs from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m., and Tesla says the fleet has crossed 4 million miles driven fully autonomously. The company paired both milestones with a batch of rider features: a live rear camera view, trip sharing, a Calm Mode for the cabin, Grok in its Model Y cars, and several accessibility improvements.

The new hours are a welcome change from earlier in the year when autonomous service would stop as early as 7 PM. Now you can call a Robotaxi up until the time the bars close. Those late night hours are where a lot of lives will be saved.

6 AM - 2 AM is almost as good as 24 hour service, but I look forward to Tesla knocking out those last four hours of downtime in the near future. With a 2 a.m. cutoff, Telsa’s Robotaxis are driving more often in the dark, with emptier roads but more tired and impaired human drivers around them. If Tesla is comfortable running at those hours, that is a signal about how much it trusts the system.

New rider features

Tesla also summarized some recent new features that are mostly about making a car with no driver feel less strange to sit in. Riders can now watch the rear camera feed during the trip, a small window into what the car sees. That change is in direct response to ride feedback from customers who said it was strange to sit in a car with no rear or side view mirrors.

Trip details can now be shared with a friend, the same safety habit people already use with human-driven ride-hailing. Tesla has redesigned its Live Activity, the live trip status that sits on an iPhone’s lock screen.

The new Calm Mode dims the screen and shifts the cabin lighting to something more relaxing, which fits neatly with service that now runs until 2 a.m. This is the mode you’ll want to be on when you’re taking a nap. And Grok, previously only available on Cybercab, is now available in Tesla’s Model Y Robotaxis as well.

Accessibility

Accessibility has been a major focus for the Cybercab, the first Tesla designed to be used by blind people. Tesla has now improved the arrow in the app that points riders to their car, added haptic feedback to help people find the vehicle, and added music control through a screen reader. Finding the right car at pickup is one of the hardest parts of ride-hailing for blind and low-vision riders, and with no driver to wave you over, the app has to do that job. People who can’t drive are among the riders robotaxis could help most, so this is the right place to spend effort and it’s great to see that Tesla is putting so much effort into making sure Robotaxi is a truly great experience for blind riders and other customers with disabilities.

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