Tesla rolls out unsupervised robotaxis in Austin. Problem for Waymo?

These stories fail to mention the elephant in the room. What's that? The cost of these vehicles. The current Tesla fleet model (Y) cost about $50,000. The Waymo vehicle is about $175,000 (after modification of the base model Jaguar I Pace). If Tesla works out the bugs, they could capitalize on this price advantage.

Tesla rolls out unsupervised robotaxis in Austin

Ground News

June 4, 2026

Tesla said the expanded geofence comes as its active unsupervised fleet remains about 20 vehicles and wait times can exceed 30 minutes, data monitors said.

On Wednesday, Tesla announced its Unsupervised Robotaxi service now covers the entire Austin Metro area, marking the fifth expansion of the geofenced operating zone since July 2025.

The expansion shifts the program toward a more mature commercial service, as Tesla has grown its operating zone through five phases over the past year, roughly doubling the service area with each iteration.

Current data indicates Tesla operates roughly 14 to 20 active unsupervised vehicles across the region, while Alphabet's Waymo maintains more than 250 vehicles within the same Austin area.

Users sometimes experience wait times in excess of 30 minutes when requesting rides, as limited fleet availability persists while Tesla prioritizes safety metrics over aggressive vehicle scaling.

Meaningful fleet expansion awaits the FSD v15 software rewrite, projected for late 2026 or early 2027, though Tesla CEO Elon Musk expects fully self-driving cars to become more widespread later this year.

Tesla Expands Unsupervised Robotaxi Service To Whole Austin Metro Area

Zachary Shahan, CleanTechnica

June 4, 2026

There’s been some criticism of Tesla’s limited and not entirely perfect robotaxi service in Austin — not to mention the fact that Elon Musk said they’d have robotaxis covering at least 50% of the US population by the end of 2025 … and we’re now almost halfway through 2026.

However, the company has been inching forward with its service, and as part of that it just expanded service in Austin again. Unsupervised Tesla robotaxis now cover the whole Austin metro area.

One of the issues with Tesla’s service in Austin has been a very limited fleet and long wait times. Expanding the service area seems like it could make that even worse. However, Tesla has been slowly putting more robotaxis into service in Austin and elsewhere. That said, it seems based on Robotaxi Tracker that the number of unsupervised Tesla robotaxis in Austin has actually gone down recently. On May 13, I wrote, “According to the website, there are 39 unsupervised Tesla Robotaxis on the road today. Most of them, 27, are in Austin.” Looking at the site right now, it shows 20 unsupervised Tesla robotaxis in Austin.

Perhaps the vehicles are just now being added or on the verge of being added…. If not, it would seem that expanding the geographic area with only 20 cars would lead to worse service — longer wait times.

“This is Tesla’s fifth expansion of the geofence, with the others occurring in July, early August, late August, and late October 2025. It has remained at that size since October 26, but Tesla has now more than doubled that size,” Teslarati shares. “It is now covering the entire area, including suburbs like Pflugerville and Manor, as well as I-35 highways, Gigafactory Texas, and the Austin-Bergstrom Airport.”

I don’t think the geographic expansion is going to change any opinions. Fans see every update as great news signaling progress, while critics are quick to point out that the whole operation is still tiny, supported by remote drivers, imperfect (if not worse than human-driven tax service), and far, far behind schedule.