Overview
- Tessie’s robotaxi program, which the company announced Saturday on its official X account, shared small service maps and a brief in-car video but gave no details on fleet size, pricing, or whether rides are supervised.
- Independent trackers report near-zero availability in the new zones, with riders and data pointing to only one active vehicle in each city, indicating a very limited pilot.
- Early Dallas rider reports describe glitches such as a missed exit that put the car on a highway before support kept it moving and guided it off, followed by wrong turns and repeated loops near the destination.
- The geofences are small—about 25 to 35 square miles—covering Houston’s Jersey Village/Willowbrook area and central-north Dallas around Highland Park, which confines trips to start and end within those boundaries.
- The expansion draws scrutiny because Tesla has reported 15 Austin crashes to NHTSA and offers few metrics, while rival Waymo has run fully driverless, larger-scale services in both Texas cities since February, a contrast likely to shape questions on Tesla’s April 22 earnings call.