Tesla’s Robotaxi service has been operating in Austin, since June and while the service has already delivered thousands of rides, there’s are some early testers who push the limits, trying to answer important questions.

One such adventurer, Kyle Conner from Out of Spec Reviews, who decided to see what happens when the battery in an electric robotaxi, gets low and requires recharging. Typically robotaxi rides are point to point and with a growing, but relatively small service area, the longest ride was around 30 minutes. This typically provided an opportunity for a robotaxi to sneak off and grab some charge between riders.

Conner had to do something artificial to even test this scenario. He and a friend, spent almost two hours constantly rerouting the Robotaxi, to make the Model Y consume enough energy to reduce the state of charge sufficient enough to test how Tesla would handle it.

Live streaming the event on X, we were able to watch the result live. As the car reached a defined threshold of 10% remaining charge, a customer service agent called the vehicle from their remote operations center.

The Tesla tech wasn’t upset, just calmly confirmed to the occupants that due to the remaining state of charge, the vehicle would need to route to the nearest Supercharger station. To keep the ride seamless, Tesla dispatched a fresh Model Y Robotaxi to meet Conner at the charger, ensuring minimal downtime for the passenger (turned out to be a few minutes).

Tesla remotely monitors the vehicles in their robotaxi fleet and its likely they seen this situation emerging as the ride length set a new record for the service. As long as a rider is able to infinitely re-route, this is always a potential issue, where despite them causing it, the EV battery could running out of energy and leave passengers stranded.

This incident marks one of the first real-world tests of the Robotaxi’s low-battery protocol, and it highlights how Tesla is adapting on the fly. As Tesla expands the service area, there’s an increasing chance that robotaxis venture to locations that don’t have multiple charging options and will always need to monitor distance remaining vs the distance to Superchargers.

Right now, Tesla’s robotaxis feature a safety rider who can also take care of plugging in the charger, but future models like the Cybercab will offer wireless charger where human intervention won’t be required. This raises the question of how many locations would offer wireless charging? It would be strange to see a robotaxi coverage area expand through the remainder of 2025, only to have the Cybercab launch in 2026 with a much smaller available service area due to wireless charging options.

This future model aims for around 480 kilometres of real-world range on a battery under 50 kWh. I suspect Tesla will dynamically select the vehicle for you, based on your pickup and dropoff locations, meaning you won’t get to select the vehicle type, at least initially. Rather than retrofitting existing Supercharger locations with wireless pads on the ground, Tesla may opt for specific Cybercab depots, similar to what Waymo does, minus the humans.

For now, the Model Y-based service demonstrates Tesla’s commitment to solving edge cases creatively. As more users like Conner test the limits, expect refinements that make Robotaxi a staple in urban transport.

If you missed the X space, it was recorded and you can re-watch it here – https://x.com/i/spaces/1RDxlzAgALEGL/peek