A plane nearly crashing into a pile of cyber taxis is a reminder that they are “piling up” unused

In an event that Elon Musk called “bizarre,” an Amazon cargo plane that was involved in a tragic crash on Sunday in Miami nearly destroyed a parking lot full of Tesla cyber taxis.

Last week, Tesla announced that Cybercabs, its gold-colored autonomous cars without a steering wheel or pedals, are now available to arrange rides as part of its app-based ride-hailing service, but only in a very limited coverage area in Austin, Texas.

On Sunday, an Amazon Prime Air cargo plane at Miami International Airport experienced some sort of mid-air malfunction just before landing and ended up skidding off the runway. In a terrifying turn of events, he crashed into a cargo van carrying airport cleaners, as well as an SUV near the airport. Five people died.

The plane stopped near the parking lot where Tesla Cybercabs were parked for unknown reasons.

🔴 The FAA announces a new order at the Miami airport for Prime Air’s brutal Boeing 767 flight.

Airport emergency services report victims after an accident. pic.twitter.com/bQrNaNw97l

— air plus news (@airplusnews) September 6, 2026

According to a map of the crash site based on data from FlightRadar24 and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the final location of the crashed plane corresponds to a parking lot for cargo trailers that can be rented by the acre. The day before the crash, electric vehicle influencer Sawyer Merritt shared someone’s video of the very same lot where 35 cyber taxis were parked.

As Tesla’s website notes, there is a Tesla Robotaxi service in Miami, but no Tesla. Cybertaxi Robotaxi service. That is, all of the current robotaxis in Tesla’s Miami autonomous fleet are Model Y vehicles with pedals and steering wheels. Until late last month, Teslas relied not only on vehicles with steering wheels and pedals, but also on human safety monitors in the driver’s seat for travel. But they appear to have been left unattended in Austin ahead of Cybercab’s limited rollout.

The full Tesla Model Y fleet in Miami is allegedly unmonitored, although it consisted of just two vehicles when it launched in early July, followed by three two days later.

But according to Elon Musk, cyber taxis are not intended to exist only as the private property of Tesla, Inc. He says people should be able to buy them both for personal transportation and as a way to earn passive income. Earlier this year, Musk said private cyber taxis would cost $30,000 or less and be available until 2027, less than four months from now.

Tesla began producing them in April, naturally, at its Gigafactory in Texas. The company has the capacity to produce 125,000 cybercabs per year. A particularly scathing Sherwood News headline described cyber taxis as “huddled together”, apparently unused. Social media accounts tracking Tesla sometimes count the number of cyber taxis that are accumulating at the same time at the outgoing Gigafactory cyber taxi rank. Sometimes their number exceeds 100.

There appear to be 45 registered cybercabs on Texas roads, some of which operate commercially in Austin. This small deployment appears to have prompted an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which will look into Tesla’s own logic for certifying Cybercabs to NHTSA safety regulations. “Among other things, NHTSA will review the extent to which Tesla’s certification was dependent on determinations that certain [vehicle standards] are not applicable to Cybercab,” NHTSA said in its investigative note.

Social media users often spot cyber taxis on public roads outside of Texas, although often with Texas license plates. Often, positive news about Cybercabs becomes fodder for Tesla fans, who then create memes trying to attack prominent Tesla critics as if America’s roads will soon be painted gold with Cybercabs. Some of them were spotted outside a Tesla dealership in Pittsburgh last month. Social media users spotted some of them in Las Vegas about two weeks ago. When they are spotted traveling outside the state of Texas, they often have steering wheels and pedals.

The fact that the plane nearly crashed into a parking lot full of cybertaxis that had no apparent reason to exist yet is a reminder that even if America’s roads aren’t yet painted gold, many of its vacant parking lots could be.

Gizmodo reached out to Tesla about the reason Cybercabs ended up in Miami and whether the plane incident has impacted the continued rollout of Cybercabs in Miami as part of the ride-hailing service. At the time of publication, we had not received a response.