San Antonio, Texas: Tesla Robotaxi Rides Open in the Company's Largest Launch Zone Yet

Tesla robotaxis began carrying riders in San Antonio at 5 a.m. local time on Monday, November 9, after the company's official Robotaxi account announced the launch on X just after midnight Texas time. San Antonio is the eighth city in the United States with the service and the fifth in Texas, after Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston. Florida accounts for the other three cities: Miami, Orlando and Tampa.

The largest zone Tesla has opened on day one

The San Antonio service area covers roughly 275 square miles, according to an estimate by Tesla watcher Sawyer Merritt, which would make it the largest area Tesla has ever opened at launch and slightly bigger than Austin at about 272 square miles. The zone covers all of downtown San Antonio and nearly everything inside Loop 410, then reaches north to Loop 1604 between Interstate 10 and U.S. 281, west past State Highway 151, east beyond Interstate 35 and south below Interstate 410 toward Interstate 37. San Antonio starts with Model Y robotaxis, the same approach Tesla used in its other Texas cities.

Tesla gave riders and reporters very little detail beyond the map. The company has not published fares, fleet size or operating hours for San Antonio, and it has not said whether a human safety monitor rides in the vehicles there, TechCrunch reported. In its earlier launches the company has usually started with a limited number of vehicles in a confined area and expanded slowly from there.

Two Texas launches in two weeks

San Antonio is Tesla's second new Texas robotaxi city in as many weeks. Unsupervised rides opened in Fort Worth on November 2. During its third quarter earnings call last month, Tesla named Las Vegas, Phoenix, Jacksonville and San Antonio as its next robotaxi markets, so San Antonio was on the company's own list, while Fort Worth arrived unannounced.

The service began in Austin in June 2025 with human safety operators on board. In January, Tesla removed the safety monitors from its Austin robotaxis. Texas registration data and the Robotaxi Tracker website show more than 400 autonomous vehicles registered in Tesla's Austin fleet, while newer cities run far smaller fleets: 24 vehicles in Fort Worth and five in Miami, according to the tracker cited by TechCrunch.

Waymo is already on San Antonio streets

Tesla is not the only driverless service in San Antonio. Waymo, owned by Alphabet, also runs robotaxis in the city with Jaguar I-Pace and Zeekr RT vehicles, and it recently restarted service there after a five month pause that followed incidents in which its vehicles got stuck after entering flooded roadways, TechCrunch reported. The two companies now compete directly in Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.

For San Antonio riders, the practical questions start simple: which neighborhoods the cars will actually pick up in, what a ride costs and how long the wait is at busy hours. Tesla has answered none of those questions in print yet. What the launch map does show is intent. The company picked its biggest opening map yet for a city where its main rival already operates, and it did so one week after Fort Worth, a pace that suggests the Texas rollout is speeding up rather than settling.