Shortly after hitting the streets in Austin, Texas, Tesla Robotaxi has already overtaken its biggest competitor, Waymo, in an exceptionally important performance metric – size of service area – all the while appearing to make a joke about it.
Indeed, Tesla’s robotic fleet has expanded its service area in Austin, doubling the potential travel locations to include the University of Texas and to form a peculiar shape on the map, per the observations by Robin, an X account belonging to a software engineer sharing news about space and technology.
Tesla Robotaxi vs. Waymo: Service area
Specifically, in terms of geofencing in Austin, the Robotaxi area is now about 3.9 square miles (10 square kilometers) larger than Waymo’s, as shown on the map posted by Robin in an X post on July 14. As a reminder, the latter launched driverless rides in October 2024 and became publicly available in March 2025.
At the same time, according to Grok AI, Tesla Robotaxi’s current service area spans 42 square miles (108.8 square kilometers), which is 5 square miles (around 13 square kilometers) larger than Waymo’s service area of 37 square miles (95.84 square kilometers).
As it happens, service area is the most important metric in telling how much progress a driverless ride-hailing service has made. Due to this, companies operating such a network are making it a point to compete for ever-larger pieces of territories they are in.
To this end, Waymo has expanded to multiple regions in the United States, spanning to Arizona and Los Angeles, while Tesla is trying to keep up in the coming months, already having submitted the necessary paperwork to get approval in both California and Arizona.
Elsewhere, Elon Musk has recently teased Tesla’s “most epic demo ever” that some believe could refer to Optimus V3, the latest evolution of Tesla’s humanoid robot, whereas others have speculated is about the Tesla Roadster, an upcoming all-electric supercar with record-setting performance and efficiency.
What do you think?
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