Looking through the Robotaxi Tracker website yesterday, I noticed more while digging into the Cybercab Tracker. Tesla has apparently sent Cybercabs to several additional cities. Aside from Austin, where 34 Cybercabs have been spotted, one has been spotted in Wichita, Kansas; one has been spotted in Washington, DC; one has been spotted in Buffalo, New York; one has been spotted in Boston, Massachusetts; one has been spotted in Alaska; two have been spotted in Chicago, Illinois; and five have been spotted in the Bay Area. So, the question is, what’s going on with this diverse geographical deployment? “In other news, the first Cybercabs have been produced. They are still produced in a low volume. I don’t know if it’s known what Tesla is doing with them at the moment, but I suppose they’re going to need to do a fair bit of testing before they’re let loose,” Ole Laursen wrote a couple of days ago under another CleanTechnica article. “Mazter” responded: “They’ve been trucking Cybercabs across the US, so I’d guess this is for calibration purposes in different cities. But just a guess.” That’s my guess as well. It would make sense that Tesla would try to get them driving around various cities learning and testing true Full Self Driving capability, especially considering it’s a whole new model that has barely gotten any driving in at all. Whether it will truly be capable of Robotaxi-level service soon, well, we’ll see. But even with that being the most obvious explanation, why as a Cybercab spotted in Alaska??? And Wichita?? These seem like odd places to start trials. Perhaps there are unique driving scenarios in these places that Tesla wanted to have the Cybercab experiencing — but, again, Alaska seems to make sense for that, but Wichita? Anyway, what we do see is Cybercabs already getting sent around the country. Any more thoughts on this, what’s going on, or where it’s leading?
