Tesla's Robotaxi service is coming to San Antonio. The service's account on X posted at 00:27 local time on Monday 9 November, or 06:27 UTC: "Robotaxi available in San Antonio starting tomorrow, 5am." Posted just after midnight, "tomorrow" could mean Monday or Tuesday. Tesla Mag reports that nine minutes later the account answered "Monday" to a follower, which puts the first rides at 5:00 on 9 November, or 11:00 UTC.

San Antonio, the second-largest city in Texas, becomes the service's fifth Texas city, after Austin, Dallas, Houston and Fort Worth. It is also the first of the four cities Tesla listed as "coming soon" in its first Robotaxi safety report on 21 October. The other three, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Jacksonville, still have no date. Fort Worth, which opened a week earlier, was not on that list.

The launch zone

The post carries the same kind of map Tesla published for Fort Worth, headed "Launch geofence". It shows a single zone around downtown San Antonio that takes in most of the city inside Loop 410 and reaches north to Loop 1604 between Interstate 10 and US 281. Tesla gave no area figure.

Rides start an hour earlier in the day than in Fort Worth, at 5:00 instead of 6:00. As with its previous launches, Tesla did not say:

  • how many cars will serve San Antonio, or whether any of them are Cybercabs;
  • whether a Tesla employee will ride along at first;
  • what a ride will cost.

Two new cities in eight days

The pace has picked up. Fort Worth opened on 2 November, and San Antonio follows a week later, both in a state where the service already does most of its driving. In Tesla's safety report, Austin, Dallas and Houston accounted for 94.8% of the 3.1 million miles its robotaxis drove with nobody from Tesla aboard between 22 January and 18 October. Outside Texas, the service runs in Orlando, Tampa and Miami in Florida, and in the Bay Area with an employee in the driver's seat.

The fleet is growing with it. Early on 9 November Tesla had 1,282 vehicles on the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles' register of automated vehicles: 709 Model Ys and 573 Cybercabs. On 2 November, the day Fort Worth opened, the total was 1,244. The register covers the whole state and does not show which city a car serves.

What it means in Europe

For European owners nothing changes. The Robotaxi service runs only in the US. In Europe, Tesla's system remains supervised driver assistance: on 3 November the Dutch RDW approved its European name, Tesla Assisted Driving, and a 10% cap on the speed margin. The production Cybercab is in Europe only as a touring display, with no plans announced for rides.

Update: 2026-11-09

Rides started at 5:00 local time on 9 November, as announced. Not a Tesla App reports that the service launched unsupervised and with Model Y robotaxis. It measures the San Antonio zone at roughly 275 square miles, the largest Tesla has opened on a first day.

Austin, where the service began, grew past it the same morning. At 11:00 UTC the Robotaxi account posted "Bigger Austin service area now live" with a before-and-after map but no area figure. The independent Robotaxi Tracker, as reported by Tesla North, estimates the new Austin zone at about 442 square miles, up 62.5% from about 272. Tesla has still not said how many cars serve San Antonio or what a ride costs.