Tesla has pushed back the end time for its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas by 1 hour, to 11 p.m. from 10 p.m. Tesla CEO Elon Musk (일론 머스크) pointed to accurately identifying pets on dark roads as a key task for expanding nighttime operations.

According to Electrek, Musk shared a notice about the extended robotaxi hours and said a major task was ensuring the vehicles do not hit hard-to-see pets, like a gray kitten on gray asphalt in a dark place.

That ties into Tesla's camera-centric autonomous driving strategy. Cameras rely on ambient light and contrast between objects, which can make low-light and low-contrast conditions difficult. Lidar and radar, by contrast, directly emit lasers and radio waves to detect nearby objects, making them less dependent on visible light.

Musk has long opposed the need for lidar. Tesla began removing radar from vehicles in 2021 and removed ultrasonic sensors in 2022, shifting to a camera-based system known as Tesla Vision.

Rival Waymo chose a different strategy. Its sixth-generation autonomous driving system uses 13 cameras, 4 lidar units and 6 radar units, using different sensors to complement each other. Waymo described the sensor configuration as designed to handle day and night conditions and various weather within a range of up to 500 metres.

Tesla's ability to cope with low-visibility environments is also under investigation by U.S. authorities. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is conducting an engineering analysis covering about 3.2 million vehicles to check whether FSD properly detects performance degradation in environments with limited visibility, such as glare, fog and dust. Investigators have identified 9 related crashes, including 1 fatal crash.

Tesla's robotaxis already operate after sunset. Musk's comments, however, show that the company needs further improvements in detecting small objects in low-light conditions to push service hours later.