Tesla plans to double the number of Robotaxi vehicles operating in Austin next month, as it moves toward removing in-car safety drivers in the city by the end of the year.
The information was revealed by CEO Elon Musk on X earlier this Wednesday.
The chief executive was answering to Tesla shareholder Sawyer Merritt and enthusiast Joe Tegtmeyer, who had pointed out that customers were facing difficulties booking a ride in Austin due to “High Service Demand,”
“I attempted to take a Robotaxi ride today from multiple different locations and time of day (from 9:00 AM to about 3:00 PM in Austin but never could do so,” Tegtmeyer wrote, adding that he “always got a “High Service Demand” message.
“I really hope Tesla is about to go unsupervised and greatly plus up the vehicle fleet as the service is essentially unusable right now,” the X user added.
Merritt commented that he had “also heard from a lot of followers who can’t get rides, or have to wait for a very long time,” suggesting that “there aren’t nearly enough vehicles in the Robotaxi fleet.”
A few hours after the post, Musk wrote in a reply that “the Tesla Robotaxi fleet in Austin should roughly double next month.”
Geofenced Area Expansion
A month ago, Tesla expanded the geofenced area of the ride-hailing service in Austin by about 44%.
It marked the first time in two months that the area was increased.
According to Tesla shareholder and X user Sawyer Merritt, the service area covers 243 square miles of the Texas capital, which represents nearly 80% of Austin’s 305 square miles.
In just two months, the company had outpaced its main competitor in Austin.
In late October, the geofenced area of Tesla‘s Robotaxi was “3.7X larger than Waymo’s,” Merritt also noted.
Tesla, which launched its ride-hailing service in late June, has already expanded its geofenced area four times.
They also introduced dynamic pricing based on distance, replacing the initial fixed fare structure.
Robotaxi Fleet
Despite the larger area, the Google subsidiary operates a much bigger fleet — with 200 vehicles deployed in Austin, where it is partnering with Uber.
According to The Driverless Digest, Waymo provides an estimated 3,600 rides per day in Austin, giving it about a 4% share of the local ride-hailing market.
In San Francisco and Los Angeles, where it first started operating, it operates a fleet of over 1,000 vehicles.
Tesla hasn’t disclosed the number of vehicles on the road in either Austin or the Bay Area, where it has expanded to a few weeks after the launch.
The fleet currently consists of Model Ys equipped with the Robotaxi FSD, with operators seated in either the driver’s or passenger’s seat, as Tesla prioritizes safety.
In October, Musk said at the All-In Podcast that he expected there to be 500 Robotaxis operating in Austin and 1,000 in the Bay Area by the end of the year.
Estimates from the website (Tesla) Robotaxi Tracker suggest that the company currently operates 29 vehicles in Austin and 96 in the Bay Area.
The numbers have not been confirmed by Tesla.
On the company’s latest earnings call, Musk announced that the company now plans to remove the safety drivers from its Robotaxi vehicles “within a few months.”
Two weeks later, during the Annual Shareholder Meeting, he reiterated the target of removing them by the end of the year in Austin.
Tesla expects to operate its robotaxi service in eight to ten metropolitan areas by the end of 2025.
