Tesla's San Antonio Robotaxi Map Is 274 Square Miles on Paper, Probably 160 to 210 Bookable

Tesla launched Robotaxi in San Antonio on November 9 with a 274-square-mile map, its eighth city, according to Electrek. The figure comes from Robotaxi Tracker, and Electrek calls it the largest day-one map Tesla has posted.

The number that matters here is not 274 but the share of it that accepts a booking. Tesla's post, made just after midnight local time, said "Robotaxi available in San Antonio starting tomorrow, 5am." It did not say how many cars will serve the zone.

Advertised area against usable area

Electrek reports that an independent tester, Koby Pierce, checked the share of each advertised zone where the Tesla app would actually accept a pickup and drop-off. His results ranged from about 59% in Austin to 78% in Dallas.

Applied to San Antonio's 274 square miles, that range gives roughly 160 to 210 square miles, which is Electrek's own estimate and not a measurement. Nobody has yet tested the San Antonio map; as of Monday morning, Robotaxi Tracker had logged no Tesla Robotaxi in the city.

1. Austin59 %
2. Miami61 %
3. Orlando70 %
4. Fort Worth72 %
5. Houston74 %
6. Dallas78 %

Source: Koby Pierce's tests, as reported by Electrek, accessed 2026-11-09

The airport shows how the map and the service can differ. San Antonio International Airport sits inside the polygon but is not served, per Electrek. Waymo, which opened its San Antonio service to every rider on October 14, includes airport trips, according to News 4 San Antonio.

Tesla against Waymo in the same city

Electrek puts Waymo's San Antonio area at 59 square miles per Robotaxi Tracker, so Tesla's polygon is more than four times larger. Even at the low end of the usable range, 160 square miles is still nearly three times Waymo's.

The fleet is the other denominator. Electrek, citing Robotaxi Tracker, counts 666 Tesla vehicles running unsupervised nationally against more than 4,000 driverless Waymo vehicles, and 453 of Tesla's are in Austin. Whether any of those 666 are assigned to San Antonio is unknown.

Measure	Tesla	Waymo
San Antonio area	274 sq mi advertised	59 sq mi
Airport	Inside map, not served	Served
Unsupervised vehicles, US	666	More than 4,000

What Electrek says is missing

Electrek reports that safety remains the bottleneck, and says riders in other cities have been routed on trips of an hour that should take about 15 minutes because routes avoid areas Tesla cannot handle unsupervised. The article does not say whether San Antonio rides carry a safety monitor, and it gives no fares.

The pattern is repeated elsewhere. Tesla expanded its Austin zone to 443 square miles on the same day, up 178 square miles since mid-September, and Electrek says downtown Houston pickups were refused within two days of that map's expansion. Electrek's argument is that "Drawing a polygon costs nothing."

The zone covers about 1.0 million residents, 51% of the metro area, and 721,000 jobs, per the same report. Those are coverage figures for the polygon, not for the area where a rider can get a car.

What would change the read

The same gap between announced and deployed shows up across the site's robotics coverage, from Serve Robotics' services pivot to Zipline's site count. Units on the road decide it.

The first test is a fleet count. If Robotaxi Tracker logs a few dozen cars in San Antonio within weeks, the usable-area range above is a ceiling on a thin service. If it logs one or two, the map is a marketing figure.

The second is a bookability test over the east and north edges of the polygon. A result above 78% would beat every city tested so far and make the 160-to-210 estimate too low. A result near 59% would match Austin, the city where Tesla has the most cars.