Tesla scales back Robotaxi fleet goal in Austin

27 November 2025

Elon Musk just told the public that Tesla would "roughly double" the size of its Robotaxi pilot fleet in Austin, Texas, next month. This might seem like a win for users who struggle to hail one of these electric taxis. A closer look at the numbers shows that the company is falling far short of its own promises for how many of these "automated" EVs would be on the road by the end of the year.

The Tesla Robotaxi pilot has been running in Austin for a few months now, using modified Model Y electric vehicles. The service officially started in June. The vehicles are equipped with Hardware 4, but most importantly, they are not yet truly driverless. This is a "supervised" pilot, which means a human Tesla employee must sit in the front seat. This supervisor watches the system and keeps a finger ready on a "killswitch" to stop the EV immediately if something goes wrong.

Just a few weeks ago, the company's CEO, Elon Musk, made a very clear promise about how many Tesla Robotaxi vehicles would be operating in the Austin area. During an appearance on the All-In Podcast, which was released on October 31, he stated that Tesla aimed to have "500 or more" taxis serving the greater Austin area by the end of the year.

Now, let us look at the current situation - the Tesla Robotaxi fleet in Austin has only about 30 Model Ys in use. If Tesla manages to "roughly double" that number next month, the fleet size will reach only about 60 vehicles. When we compare 60 vehicles to the 500 cars promised just weeks ago, the difference is huge. Tesla will miss its year-end goal by almost 90%. For analysts and investors who have followed the company's autonomous driving announcements, this is yet another very significant missed deadline.

For the people who live in Austin and try to use the service, the small fleet size has caused serious issues. Users often open the app and see a "High Service Demand" message. Wait times for a ride frequently go past 40 minutes, which makes the service largely unusable for quick travel. While more electric cars are certainly welcome, the reason the fleet is growing so slowly may be due to the need for a human supervisor in every car.

Scaling up to 500 EVs would require Tesla to hire over a thousand human employees to manage multiple shifts, turning a software challenge into a massive human resources problem. This "supervised" requirement seems to be the main reason the growth of the Robotaxi program is so limited right now. This limit is especially concerning given that the pilot has already reported seven crashes in its first few months.

The slow deployment also stands out when compared to what the competition is doing. Earlier this month, Waymo announced that it has a fleet of 2,500 active robotaxis working across the United States. Waymo already operates roughly 200 autonomous EVs in Austin alone. In a surprising turn, Mr. Musk dismissed Waymo's numbers, calling them "Rookie numbers."

Yet, the data shows that Waymo's fleet in Austin is already three to four times larger than what Tesla hopes to achieve with its expanded 60-car fleet of Model Y vehicles next month. To add to the irony, Waymo's Austin EVs are operating fully driverless, requiring no human safety chaperone in the front seat, unlike Tesla's human-monitored vehicles.

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