Tesla announced Wednesday that it has expanded its autonomous taxi service to cover the entire Austin metropolitan region in Texas, marking another step in the electric vehicle company’s push to accelerate its self-driving ride operations.
The expansion of the driverless taxi service and broader implementation of its full self-driving technology – which powers the autonomous vehicles – represents a crucial component of Tesla’s growth plan following CEO Elon Musk’s strategic shift from electric vehicles toward artificial intelligence and robotics.
“Unsupervised Robotaxi now in the entire Austin Metro area,” Tesla’s official robotaxi account said in a post on X.
The autonomous taxi service has been running in Austin for almost a year, with riders frequently experiencing wait periods that exceed 30 minutes.
Based on data from Austin city officials, Tesla operates approximately 50 autonomous vehicles in the area, compared to Alphabet’s Waymo which runs over 250 vehicles in the same region.
Musk stated last month that he anticipates fully autonomous vehicles operating without human safety operators will expand across the United States during the latter part of this year, following their initial deployment in Texas.
The electric vehicle manufacturer announced in April that it was launching its driverless taxi service in Dallas and Houston.
