Tesla’s Robotaxi service in San Antonio opened on Nov. 10, 2026 with an advertised zone of about 274 square miles, the biggest day-one map the company has posted. The zone stretches from Loop 1604 on the north side to just south of downtown. Tesla’s Robotaxi account announced the launch just after midnight, promising rides starting at 5 a.m. local time.
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San Antonio is Tesla’s eighth Robotaxi city, and it is also a city where Waymo already operates. Comparing the two maps produces a striking ratio, but the figure for Tesla is an advertised polygon, and the testing done in other cities suggests the usable portion is smaller.
Waymo’s 59 square miles against Tesla’s polygon
Electrek, which broke down the launch, reports that Robotaxi Tracker lists Waymo’s current San Antonio service area at 59 square miles. Against about 274 square miles for Tesla, the advertised zone is more than four times larger, roughly 4.6 times on the raw division. Waymo began driverless rides in the city in February with a little over 60 square miles, and opened to all riders on Oct. 14, a post that also put San Antonio International Airport inside its service.
The same tracker counts more than 4,000 driverless Waymo vehicles nationwide against 666 for Tesla, according to Electrek’s report on the San Antonio launch. Tesla has not disclosed how many cars will serve the area, and the tracker had logged no Tesla Robotaxis in San Antonio as of Monday morning, Nov. 9.
The zone includes about 1.0 million residents, 51% of the metro, and 721,000 jobs, per the tracker. The airport sits inside the polygon but is not served.
Pickup and drop-off limits inside the advertised map
Koby Pierce, who tracks Tesla’s service areas, tested thousands of addresses in the Robotaxi app and found that only part of each advertised area accepts pickups and drop-offs. His results, relayed by Electrek, were about 59% usable in Austin, 61% in Miami, about 70% in Orlando, about 72% in Fort Worth, about 74% in Houston and 78% in Dallas. In a Nov. 3 post about Austin, Pierce wrote that Austin’s pickup and drop-off geofence is about 41% smaller than advertised. He points to railroad crossings as one factor in several cities.
Applying that pattern, Electrek estimates San Antonio’s usable area at roughly 160 to 210 square miles, with the airport excluded, and says the honest way to read the announcement is “up to 274 square miles.” By simple arithmetic, 160 to 210 square miles is about 2.7 to 3.6 times Waymo’s 59, so the lead narrows but does not vanish.
Houston’s map as a precedent for reading Tesla’s polygons
Electrek had already examined an oddly shaped Houston service area in two earlier pieces, one on the Houston geofence expansion on Oct. 26 and a follow-up on the Houston service area on Oct. 28. Those stories set the template for scrutinizing what Tesla publishes against what the app lets riders book.
Electrek’s launch article says Tesla now runs unsupervised rides in eight cities, and describes safety as a continuing bottleneck, with some routes forced around areas Tesla cannot navigate without supervision. It does not describe which safety arrangements apply in San Antonio specifically.
Waymo’s own San Antonio record has had interruptions. Axios reported in September that Waymo was back in the city after flood-related fixes, in a story on the San Antonio relaunch of service, and TechCrunch covered the start of airport rides on March 31. Those details show that the 59-square-mile map belongs to an operator that has weathered one weather pause and then expanded to riders and to the airport, while Tesla’s map arrives all at once on paper.
The fleet gap frames the same comparison. With 666 Tesla vehicles counted nationwide across eight cities, an average of roughly 83 per city if they were spread evenly, a 274-square-mile promise implies thin coverage unless the San Antonio fleet is much larger than the national average. Tesla has not said what the local number will be, so the density of cars, not the size of the polygon, may decide how quickly riders find a ride.
Pierce’s tested range offers a way to bracket San Antonio before riders try it. Applied to 274 square miles, his lowest result, Austin’s 59%, gives about 162 square miles, and his highest, Dallas’s 78%, gives about 214. Electrek’s 160-to-210 estimate sits inside that band. Neither number is a measurement of San Antonio itself, and Tesla’s app will be the only real test, since the company has not published a list of addresses it will serve or the exclusion zones inside the polygon.
Two measurements will settle how the comparison reads in practice: how many Tesla vehicles actually show up in the tracker after launch, and what share of the 274 square miles accepts a ride request once riders in the city start testing the app.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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