Tesla expands robotaxi service to San Antonio, challenging Waymo

Rides will start at 5 a.m. local time on Monday in San Antonio, Tesla said via an X post announcing the move, part of a broader service rollout across Texas and Florida. Tesla gave no detail on hours, whether its two-seater Cybercab will join the Model Y vehicles already in use, or whether human safety monitors will be aboard.

The expansion follows Tesla’s limited Austin launch in June 2025, which ran with human safety operators until the company removed them in January, starting a fully driverless service there. In the 11 months since, Tesla has extended service to limited areas of Miami and Orlando in Florida, and Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston in Texas.

San Antonio already has a robotaxi operator: Waymo, the Alphabet subsidiary, runs a driverless service there under the Ojai brand, using a vehicle mix that includes the Jaguar I-Pace and the Zeekr RT, alongside its Austin, Dallas and Houston fleets. Waymo recently resumed San Antonio service after a five-month pause triggered by incidents in which its vehicles got stuck after driving onto flooded roads.

Tesla’s fleet size varies sharply by city: more than 400 registered autonomous vehicles in Austin, versus a count of just 24 for Fort Worth and five for Miami, per Texas vehicle registration records and figures published by the Robotaxi Tracker site. The company also runs a human-driven ride-hailing service in the San Francisco Bay Area under a transportation charter permit, since it lacks the permits required for driverless ride-hailing in California. Despite the push, data Tesla released this summer showed its robotaxi network drove fewer paid miles in the second quarter than the first, TechCrunch reported in July.

Why it matters

San Antonio becomes the latest city where Tesla’s robotaxi push runs directly alongside Waymo’s established service, underscoring how uneven Tesla’s expansion has been from city to city even as it chases Waymo’s lead.