Autonomous vehicles face many challenges when on the road. Elon Musk said that one of these challenges still has "nine lives."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced on Saturday that the company would extend the operating hours of its Austin robot taxis from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m., and stated that his team has been working hard to resolve a rather subtle issue.

In a post on X, Musk wrote: "The main problem we want to solve is to ensure that we don't hit pets when it's difficult to see at night. In fact, we're striving to avoid running over little gray cats on gray roads in the dark."

After years of delays, Tesla's robotic taxis were launched in Austin last year. Since then, the company has gradually expanded their availability in that area as well as in other cities in Texas and Florida.

Cats and dogs often suddenly run onto the streets in an unpredictable manner, which can thus pose a higher risk than the relatively regular traffic flow of cars.

In a reply to one of his X posts on Saturday, Musk pointed out that the camera processing assisted by AI is one way to improve night visibility.

He said, "When AI is performing photon counting analysis, the visible spectrum camera can still see very clearly in the dark."

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the United States is investigating Tesla's camera system used in fully autonomous vehicles, as well as whether its ability to detect road hazards in conditions of poor visibility is sufficient.

The leader in the robotic taxi industry, Waymo, uses a different system from Tesla – it employs lidar (LiDAR) to scan the environment. One late night last year, a vehicle from Waymo killed a 9-year-old tabby cat named KitKat, which subsequently sparked mourning among the local residents.

In a report submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of the United States, Tesla stated that in September 2025, a Tesla Model Model Y operating in Austin's robot taxi service collided with a dog that ran into the street. The report indicated that the dog ran away in front of the vehicle and apparently did not get injured.

Elon Musk has owned cats, one of which was named “Schrödinger,” after the famous thought experiment involving cats by that physicist. Musk once said that he “tried to like” Schrödinger, but “that feeling didn’t get any response at all.”

“One day it disappeared,” he said.