A Tesla Cybertruck sits on a lot at a Tesla dealership on April 15, 2024 in Austin, Texas.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
Tesla shares fell nearly 4% on Tuesday after a report that the electric vehicle maker was halting production of Cybertruck and Model Y models for a week in Austin, Texas.
The production stoppage begins June 30, Business Insider reported, citing a staff meeting where the announcement was made. The pause, which is for maintenance on production lines, would be the third such shutdown at the Austin facility in the past year, according to BI.
CNBC has reached out to Tesla for comment on the reported pause.
Tesla is tentatively launching its Model Y robotaxi in Austin on June 22, using vehicles equipped with a new version of the company’s “Full Self-Driving” technology.
CEO Elon Musk on June 10 reposted a video clip on X of a Model Y robotaxi on a road in Austin, adding to the buzz for the promised launch.
Public safety advocacy groups say that Tesla’s partially automated driving systems have safety problems.
Tesla sells its cars with a standard Autopilot package, or a premium “Full Self-Driving” option, also known as FSD or FSD supervised, in the U.S. Vehicles with these systems, which include features such as automatic lane keeping, steering and parking, have been involved in hundreds of collisions, including dozens of fatalities, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data.
Tesla’s robotaxis are equipped with a future release of Tesla’s FSD software. That “unsupervised” FSD technology is not yet available to the public.
Several groups in Austin on Thursday protested the upcoming robotaxi pilot launch and Musk’s involvement in the Trump administration.
The Dawn Project, a technology safety group critical of Tesla’s FSD abilities, demonstrated a safety situation using a Model Y equipped with the currently available software.
In the FSD demonstration, the Model Y drove past a stopped school bus with its stop sign out and struck a child-sized mannequin that was pulled in front of the moving car, simulating a child running across the street to catch the bus.
Dawn Project founder Dan O’Dowd also runs Green Hills Software, which sells technology to Tesla competitors.
Read the full BI story here.
Tesla year-to-date stock chart.
— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.
