Alamo Ride: Tesla Robotaxi Launches In San Antonio With Its Biggest Service Area Yet

Tesla's Robotaxi is heading for the Alamo City. The company's driverless ride-hailing service opens in San Antonio, Texas, at 5 a.m. Central time on Monday, 9 November, and it arrives with the largest service area Tesla has ever offered on day one.

"Robotaxi available in San Antonio starting tomorrow, 5am," the official Robotaxi account posted on X, alongside a map of the launch geofence. The shaded zone wraps around downtown San Antonio and reaches out toward Loop 1604 on the north side of the city. Sawyer Merritt, the Tesla investor who tracks the company closely, wrote that rides begin on 9 November at 5 a.m. CT.

By Mr. Merritt's count, the San Antonio zone covers about 275 square miles, edging past Austin at 272 to become Tesla's largest Robotaxi service area at launch. His updated list puts Houston at 254 square miles, Fort Worth at 143, Dallas at 81, Miami at 31, Orlando at 26 and Tampa at 24.

San Antonio makes eight cities where Tesla runs unsupervised Robotaxi rides, five in Texas and three in Florida. Mr. Merritt calculated that the combined geofences now cover about 4.2 million people, or 1.2 percent of the United States population, up from 1.0 percent last week.

The 5 a.m. start lines up with the earlier opening time that the Robotaxi app began showing on Sunday, when the service day stretched to 21 hours, from 5 a.m. to 2 a.m.

Size on day one matters to riders. A larger map means more of a city's everyday trips, from downtown errands to runs across the north side, fit inside the zone from the very first ride. San Antonio begins its Robotaxi life bigger than the Austin zone is today.

For Texas, it is another big city on the map. For Tesla, it is the biggest opening yet, and a clear sign of how fast the Robotaxi map is growing.