Tesla Robotaxi picks up at the door in 69% of its advertised geofence across six cities, new tracker shows

EVwire brief: Tesla's Robotaxi service picks riders up right at their address in about 69% of the area its app advertises across six cities, with walk-to pickup spots covering much of the rest, according to new address-by-address testing.

The findings come from the Geofence Tracker, a new site built by Koby Pierce that puts the service area shown in each app next to the area where a pickup actually works. Real addresses were entered into the Robotaxi app one by one, and each result was logged as a pickup at the door, a nearby spot to walk to, or a declined ride. Tesla's advertised shapes come from the service area data the app itself downloads.

Here's Koby's announcement of the tracker on X:

Across Houston, Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, Miami and Orlando, Tesla advertises 810 square miles (2,098 km²) of service area, and the app offers a door-to-door pickup in 555 square miles (1,437 km²) of it. Using 2020 Census blocks, Koby counts about 3.15 million people living inside Tesla's advertised geofences, about 2.63 million of whom live where the car will come to their door. Counting walk-to pickups, most cities come close to their full advertised geofence.

Koby explained why he uses door-to-door coverage as the main measure:

Here's the city-by-city breakdown, as per the Geofence Tracker:

*Austin was tested on November 4, before Tesla's latest expansion, so the figures cover its previous geofence.

Austin posted the lowest share, with its door-to-door area split into 28 separate pieces and 89 holes. Houston's real geofence has 11 pieces and 66 holes, the largest of which sit around Near Northwest and the Washington Avenue and Memorial Park area, at about 2 square miles (5.2 km²) each. With walk-to pickups included, Houston's coverage rises to 234 of its 255 advertised square miles.

The tracker also covers Waymo in Houston, where the result went the other way. Waymo's real Houston geofence measures 55.3 square miles (143 km²) against an advertised 48.9 square miles (127 km²), or 113%, as its app allowed pickups almost everywhere inside the advertised area plus another 6.1 square miles (15.8 km²) outside it. Waymo doesn't offer walk-to pickups, and its advertised shape comes from Robotaxi Tracker's map rather than the app.

Here are Geofence Tracker’s estimates from Tesla’s Robotaxi Network service areas:

Context:

The tracker arrives as Tesla's advertised geofences keep growing. Houston's Robotaxi service area jumped to roughly 250 square miles in late October, Fort Worth launched with about 143 square miles earlier this month, and San Antonio debuted at about 275 square miles this week. Austin's geofence was expanded to roughly 440 square miles right after Koby's Austin testing, and the tracker already lists the new advertised area at 443 square miles, in line with EVwire's estimate.

Houston is also the one city where the tracker can compare both services so far, and the two operate at very different scales there. Tesla's door-to-door area alone covers 190 square miles of Houston, more than three times the 55.3 square miles where Waymo will pick riders up. Tesla first launched unsupervised Robotaxi service in Dallas and Houston in April, and Miami followed in July as its first market outside Texas and California.

Source: Geofence Tracker, Koby Pierce

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