The total lack of a launch event, or even vetted influencer content, tells you a lot about the situation here. Elon desperately needs some good news from one of his companies right now, and Tesla's tiny "robotaxi" fleet is all he has... but too much attention will expose the massive risks involved.

Musk is running the same basic scam he has been since Tesla got into driving automation: demonstrations "proving" that its systems are "capable" of automated driving. What matters in this technology is not capability, but a level of reliability you can trust your life too. This fleet won't get there

It sounds as if Tesla's Austin "robotaxi" fleet is tiny, and likely limited to a relatively small operating domain in a specific portion of the city. That should give them a few weeks of relatively limited risk in which to build up hype, but as they scale up the crashes will start coming fast.