tesla-robotaxi

Tesla announced today that its “Robotaxi” service is now rolling out in Dallas and Houston, marking the company’s first expansion beyond Austin and San Francisco. The company shared maps of the two new service areas, which appear to cover small slices of each city.

The Houston geofence covers approximately 25 square miles, according to early user analysis of the maps, while the Dallas zone appears to center around the Highland Park area. For context, Tesla’s Austin geofence has grown to roughly 245 square miles after months of gradual expansion — but that took nearly a year to reach from an initial 20-square-mile footprint.

Tesla has started offering Robotaxi rides without a safety monitor in Austin, Texas. After yet another set of missed timelines and a full decade of broken promises, Elon Musk is finally getting a version of the “win” he has been desperately seeking. But considering the alarming crash data we have and the evidence of heavy remote monitoring, should we be excited or terrified?

Update: New video evidence shows that Tesla’s supposedly “unsupervised” Robotaxis in Austin are being closely followed by black Tesla trailing cars with safety monitors inside. Tesla didn’t remove the safety monitors – it just moved them to a different vehicle.

Tesla has been granted a Transportation Network Company (TNC) permit by the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT), enabling the company to operate a paid ride-hailing service in the state officially.

This will allow Tesla to launch its ‘Robotaxi’ similarly to how it does in California – meaning with Uber drivers using Full Self-Driving Supervised (FSD).