Tesla’s Las Vegas Robotaxi Launch Nears, as Cybercabs Spotted in Nevada

Tesla is gearing up for robotaxi service in Las Vegas, and more of the gold-colored Cybercabs built for the job have been spotted around Southern Nevada, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The company has applied for an autonomous vehicle network permit with the Nevada Transportation Authority. If approved, it would let Tesla run commercial robotaxi rides across the Las Vegas Valley. State spokeswoman Teri Williams confirmed the application was made public last week and will now go through review.

“It could take some time to work through the staff review process before they make a recommendation to the full Authority to deliberate during a General Session,” Williams said.

Tesla isn’t just waiting around for approval either. The company is putting $3.1 million into retrofitting a 37,000-square-foot building in the southwest valley, adding eight superchargers and six car lifts inside. Tesla Robotaxi also holds two business licenses through Clark County, one tied to that building for auto wash and detailing, and another for a building on Fremont Street covering administrative work. On top of that, Tesla is hiring for a couple of Vegas-based robotaxi roles, including a nighttime supervisor and a nighttime fleet support specialist.

This would build on approval Tesla already got last year to test autonomous vehicles in the state, though that only covered testing, not paid rides.

Musk has talked about Las Vegas as a target market before. On an earnings call last summer, he said Tesla was working to get regulatory approval in multiple areas, including Vegas. More recently, on the April earnings call, he said he expects robotaxis and full self-driving vehicles running in about a dozen states by the end of the year, though he didn’t specify which ones.

“We’re taking a very cautious approach to the rollout here,” Musk said. “We haven’t had any injuries and certainly no fatalities to date with the unsupervised FSD and robotaxi expansion. We want to keep it that way. I think probably unsupervised FSD or robotaxi revenue will not be super material this year, but I do think it’ll be material probably in a significant way next year.”

Right now, Tesla’s robotaxi service already runs in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Vegas is also home to Musk’s other transit project, the Boring Company’s Vegas Loop. What started as a way to shuttle people around the Las Vegas Convention Center has grown to include stops at Resorts World, Encore, Westgate, and Fontainebleau. Crews are finishing up tunnels under Paradise Road that Boring Co. President Steve Davis told the Review-Journal he expects to open before the Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix in November. There are also plans to push the Loop further into downtown Vegas and out to MGM Grand and Park MGM.