Super-Sized: Tesla Robotaxi Grows Austin Zone 63% To 443 Square Miles

Austin has its crown back. On Monday, 9 November, the same morning San Antonio opened with the biggest Robotaxi launch zone Tesla had ever offered, the company pushed its Austin service area out by 63 percent, to about 443 square miles.

"Bigger Austin service area now live," the official Robotaxi account posted on X at 5 a.m. Central time, with a map setting the old geofence against the new one. The new boundary reaches further west, pushes north-east toward Manor and stretches south-east beyond Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

Sawyer Merritt, the Tesla investor who tracks the service closely, calculated that the expansion adds 171 square miles, taking coverage to 443 square miles from 272.

That figure puts Austin back at the top of Tesla's Robotaxi map. Earlier on Monday, CyberCab.news reported that San Antonio, at about 275 square miles, had edged past Austin to become the largest zone. Mr. Merritt's updated list now reads Austin 443, San Antonio about 275, Houston 254, Fort Worth 143, Dallas 81, Miami 31, Orlando 26 and Tampa 24, and he notes that all eight areas run fully unsupervised Robotaxi rides.

Nic Cruz Patane, a Tesla commentator on X, wrote that the new Austin zone is now the largest unsupervised ride-hailing territory in the United States, surpassing Waymo's Phoenix metro area, which his comparison graphic puts at 356 square miles. He also pointed to the pace: Robotaxi has been operating for 16 months, he noted, while Waymo has been running for more than six years.

For riders, a larger map changes everyday use. More trips, from downtown to the edges of the metro, can now begin and end inside the zone. The cars are already busy. CybercabSpotter, an account that logs Cybercab sightings, counted 1,142 Cybercab sightings in Austin on Sunday, 8 November, 1,061 of them driverless.

Austin is where Tesla's Robotaxi service began. By Monday afternoon it was the biggest Robotaxi city again, and the back-and-forth between Tesla's Texas cities shows how quickly the map keeps growing.