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yesterday

Musk Says Tesla Will Double Austin Robotaxi Fleet Next Month

The supervised pilot remains constrained, with community counts suggesting the expansion would lift Austin’s fleet only to about 60 vehicles.

A Tesla robotaxi drives on the street along South Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas, U.S., June 22, 2025. REUTERS/Joel Angel Juarez
A Tesla robotaxi, left, and a Waymo autonomous vehicle ply a residential street in Austin in July. Unlike its biggest automated vehicle competitor, Tesla has redacted the narratives in the reports of its seven robotaxi incidents in Austin so far this year.
Waymo has a much larger fleet than Tesla Robotaxi.
Tesla secured a permit that allows the company to operate a ridehailing service with autonomous vehicles in Texas.

Overview

  • Elon Musk announced on X that the Austin fleet will “roughly double” in December after users reported long waits and frequent “High Service Demand” messages.
  • Independent trackers put the current Austin fleet near 29–30 cars, so a doubling implies roughly 60 vehicles, well below Musk’s recent target of about 500 by year-end.
  • Tesla’s Austin service continues to run with in‑car safety monitors, and reporting describes operations effectively at SAE Level 2 with reliance on teleoperations under Texas rules.
  • Rival Waymo runs a larger, fully driverless service in Austin with about 200 vehicles and operates sizable driverless fleets in other U.S. cities.
  • Tesla recently secured an Arizona ride‑hailing permit even as scrutiny grows over its NHTSA submissions that redact narratives for seven reported Austin robotaxi incidents this year.