how soon before someone shoots one? Tesla turns to Texas to test its autonomous Cybercab The state is much more permissive than California for driverless vehicles. Jonathan M. Gitlin Feb 10, 2025 1:13 pm | 8 Credit: Aurich Lawson/Getty Images Credit: Aurich Lawson/Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreIf you live or drive in Austin, Texas, you might start seeing some new-looking Teslas on your roads later this summer. Tesla says it wants to start offering rides for money in the two-seater "Cybercab" that the company revealed last year at a Hollywood backlot. California might be the place with enough glitz to unleash that particular stock-bumping news to the world, but the Golden State is evidently far too restrictive for a company like Tesla to truck with. Instead, the easygoing authorities in Texas provide a far more attractive environment when it comes to putting driverless rubber on the road.During the early days of its autonomous vehicle (AV) ambitions, Tesla did its testing in California, like most of the rest of the industry. California was early to lay down laws and regulations for the nascent AV industry, a move that some criticized as premature and unnecessarily restrictive. Among the requirements has been the need to report test mileage and disengagements, reports that revealed that Tesla's testing has in fact been extremely limited within that state's borders since 2016.Other states, mostly ones blessed with good weather, have become a refuge for AV testing away from California's strictures, especially car-centric cities like Phoenix, Arizona, and Austin, Texas. Texas amended its transportation code in 2017 to allow autonomous vehicles to operate on its roads, and it took away any ability for local governments to restrict testing or deployment. By contrast, companies like Waymo and the now-shuttered Cruise were given much more narrow permission to deploy only in limited parts of California.Texan highways started seeing autonomous semi trucks by 2021, the same year the Texas House passed legislation that filled in some missing gaps. But Tesla won't be the first to start trying to offer robotaxis in AustinWaymo has been doing that since late 2023. Even Volkswagen has been driving driverless Buzzes around Austin in conjuction with MobilEye; ironically, Tesla was a MobilEye customer until it was fired by the supplier back in 2016 for taking too lax an approach to safety with its vision-based advanced driver assistance system.Texas' rules say that autonomous vehicles are allowed to operate throughout the state as long as they comply with state traffic and vehicle laws and conform to federal rules regarding vehicle safety and AVs (such as they are). Cars must also have a data logging system and report any crashes. In effect, the state issues the car with a driver's license but without actually giving it a test first to prove that it's able to drive safely.Tesla's record with partially automated driving systems provides little confidence that the company will meet yet another of CEO Elon Musk's overly ambitious deadlines. Both Autopilot and "Full Self Driving" are the subject of multiple federal safety investigations, and testing last year showed the system disengaged about once every 13 miles (21 km).A quick look at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's data from its standing general order to report any crashes involving an automated driving system or a partially automated driving assist like Tesla's shows a little more than 10 percent of ADAS crashes involving Teslas have occurred in Texas since 2021299 reports out of a total of 2,621 Tesla crashes. Oddly, all entries for Tesla have their narrative redacted due to possibly containing confidential material, a courtesy that was extended to no other automaker bar some (but not all) reports from BMW.Unlike the rest of the industry, Tesla has eschewed sensors like lidar and forward-looking radar for its driver assists and the supposedly fully autonomous Cybercab, an approach that NHTSA was looking more likely to demand fixes to, at least until the results of the 2024 election became clear. That would have required a very costly physical recall and would surely have harmed Tesla's share price despite that stock's immense reality distortion field.Assuming Tesla is able to start deploying its Cybercabs on Austin streetssomething its history suggests is not at all a sure betthere may be some confusion if the vehicles start crashing into or hitting other road users. That's particularly true since Texas' code says that the owner of the AV is responsible for that vehicle complying with applicable laws. But Texas requires that fault is determined in an accident to work out who is liable to pay for damages, responsibility that Tesla has steadfastly refused to accept in virtually all its Autopilot and FSD crashes.Jonathan M. GitlinAutomotive EditorJonathan M. GitlinAutomotive Editor Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica's automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC. 8 Comments