Robotaxi reports.

San Antonio service opens Monday

Tesla began offering Robotaxi rides in San Antonio at 5 a.m. local time on Monday, November 9, according to Not a Tesla App. The site said Tesla's official Robotaxi account on X announced shortly after midnight that service would be available "starting tomorrow, 5am." It describes the rides as unsupervised and says the city launches with Model Y vehicles rather than the purpose-built Cybercab.

Not a Tesla App puts the zone at about 275 square miles, covering downtown San Antonio and most of the area inside Loop 410, and calls it Tesla's largest launch area so far, just ahead of Austin's 272 square miles. It cautions that advertised zone sizes may overstate the area where pickups and drop-offs are actually available. Tesla Oracle, citing EVWire estimates, gives about 272 square miles for a polygon centered on downtown that includes San Antonio International Airport. That outlet suggests autonomous airport pickups may be restricted, though it describes this as its own inference rather than a Tesla statement.

Both outlets count San Antonio as Tesla's eighth Robotaxi city, after Austin, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Miami, Orlando and Tampa. Not a Tesla App says Tesla named San Antonio, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Jacksonville as upcoming markets on its third-quarter earnings call, and that Cybercab rides remain limited to Austin.

Tesla's own third-quarter shareholder update, filed October 21, names Austin as the city where Cybercab rides began, on September 3. It reports nearly two million cumulative unsupervised Robotaxi miles, lists Austin hours of 6 a.m. to midnight, and says Tesla expects to cut wait times through more fleet supply and better orchestration. It gives no fleet size and does not mention San Antonio.

A coverage area describes where a rider can request a trip, not how many cars serve it. Tesla has not said how many vehicles it has placed in San Antonio, so the quality of the service at the edges of a zone this large is not yet documented.

Local groundwork and Waymo's position

The launch follows a local land-use decision for a support site. On July 21, San Antonio's Zoning Commission voted 8-2 to let Tesla charge and store robotaxis on a Josephine Street lot in the Tobin Hill area, near the Pearl district, the San Antonio Report reported. City staff had recommended denial, calling the use inconsistent with the area's evolving development pattern. The landowner plans to lease the lot to Tesla, with full-time staff on site to monitor and charge the vehicles. Chair Kin Yan Hui voted yes but said the city's Unified Development Code should be updated as more autonomous vehicles arrive. The report does not say whether the lot is now in use.

Waymo is the other driverless operator in the city. The same July report said Waymo began driving in San Antonio earlier in 2026 but suspended passenger service in April after flash flooding washed away one of its vehicles and exposed a software issue. Waymo said then that service would resume soon and gave no date; its current San Antonio status is not established by that article.

The sources reviewed describe no new permit or approval tied to Tesla's start in San Antonio. Federal vehicle certification and state or local operating authority are separate questions, and the reporting establishes that Tesla announced the service and that trade outlets report rides being offered on Monday morning.

What to watch next

Tesla said on its October 21 earnings call that Cybercab service in Dallas would begin in November, and it has not named a day. San Antonio's launch with Model Ys suggests the Cybercab rollout and the geographic expansion are proceeding on separate tracks.

Tesla's replies to NHTSA's Cybercab certification audit, Audit Query 26002, were due October 30 after an extension, according to Not a Tesla App's earlier reporting. NHTSA has published no finding in the sources reviewed.