Tesla elongates its service area, already bigger than Waymo in Austin

EVWire brief: Tesla expanded its robotaxi service area in Austin by... to... well, just see it yourself:

This has produced all sorts of puns around the Internet, including this one:

Yes, Tesla really made the joke that someone on X posted, the “how funny would it be if Tesla…”, happen.

I would assume the actual expansion will be spread out somewhat, but they’ll likely keep that joke going for a bit there. And with it, Tesla is already ~3.9 sqmi larger service area than Waymo in Austin:

And the fleet validation vehicles that Tesla runs before allowing the service in any area have been found way further out as well. Considering Tesla really pushed to make this joke, we think they are actually sandbagging the real service area and it will be expanded within days now.

Tesla also raised the ride fee from $4.20 to another fixed fee to…

you guessed it,

to $6.90 per ride.

By the way, Tesla’s geofenced area in Austin alone now covers 7% of Waymo’s entire service area in the US. And Waymo does ~13M robotaxi rides per year right now.

So my napkin math says at the same rate, we can assume Tesla does 17,500 robotaxi rides per week right now already (910k/year) - if it had the same amount of robotaxis running on the same coverage area in Austin.

While Tesla likely still runs a smaller fleet than Waymo in Austin, we know Tesla can ramp up fast if it wants to - quite literally nothing is stopping it since it’s factory is right next door.

Giga Texas has the installed production capacity of >250,000 Model Y’s per year. And each of those coming out of the factory (coming out autonomously, by the way), already carries the sensor suite and brain needed for that very robotaxi service.

Since launching the robotaxi, Tesla has improved based on feedback:

Tesla is planning to expand its Robotaxi service to Arizona as it has filed for permits for Metro Phoenix area, and Musk recently said Tesla is waiting on regulatory approvals to launch robotaxis in the San Francisco Bay Area, which he said will happen in a “month or two.”

However, filings don’t yet show Tesla having applied for either driverless testing permits or deployment authorization, both required before offering any commercial robotaxi service in California.

Meanwhile, one of the key Tesla AI team engineers, Srihari Sampathkumar, leaves the company. Here is his goodbye note.

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