Tesla plans to roughly double the size of its robotaxi fleet in Austin, Texas, in December, Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Tuesday, signaling a fresh step-up in the company’s push to expand its self-driving ride-hailing service.
“The Tesla Robotaxi fleet in Austin should roughly double next month,” Musk said in a post on social media platform X, which he also owns. Tesla has not disclosed how many robotaxis it currently operates in the city.
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Tesla’s robotaxi service is currently running in two U.S. markets — Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area — with safety monitors still required inside the vehicles. The company also received a permit last week to operate a ride-hailing service in Arizona, adding a third state to its expanding regulatory footprint.
Musk has repeatedly said Tesla expects to remove in-vehicle safety drivers as confidence in its autonomous system grows. In October, he said robotaxis would operate without safety drivers in large parts of Austin this year and that services would expand to eight to 10 metropolitan areas by year-end. In July, he also said he expected Tesla robotaxis to reach about half of the U.S. population by the end of the year.
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The wider robotaxi sector has seen renewed momentum after years of setbacks linked to high costs, regulatory hurdles and federal investigations. Tesla is now accelerating alongside competitors including Alphabet’s Waymo and Amazon-backed Zoox, as companies race to scale autonomous ride-hailing services across major U.S. cities.
