Pole Position: Tesla Stretches Austin Robotaxi Zone to F1 Circuit, Adds Late Hour

Tesla has widened its Robotaxi service area in Austin to take in the district around the city's Formula 1 circuit, just as one of the biggest weekends on the Texas sporting calendar gets under way.

The updated map appeared in the Robotaxi app early Friday and was shared on X by Sawyer Merritt. It pushes the geofence out toward the track, and Merritt reported that service now runs until 1 a.m., an hour later than the midnight close Tesla had been operating.

The timing is hard to miss. Merritt put race weekend attendance at around 400,000 people, and those crowds will need ways in and out of the area long after the last session ends. A later close gives riders leaving evening events one more hour to hail a driverless ride home.

There is a caveat. Riders who studied the new map said the service area appears to stop short of the circuit itself, so drop-offs at the gates may not be possible. Merritt said attendees should still be able to use Robotaxi in the surrounding areas.

The expansion caps a busy week for Tesla's driverless program. On its third-quarter earnings call, the company said public, unsupervised Cybercab rides start in Dallas in November, the first city after Austin, and its Robotaxi site now lists Las Vegas, Jacksonville, Phoenix and San Antonio as coming soon.

For Austin, the bigger map is a test under pressure: a weekend of heavy traffic, road closures and late nights, with Tesla's fleet, gold two-seat Cybercabs included, right in the middle of it.