Robotaxi Rolls Into Fort Worth: Tesla Opens a 143-Square-Mile Zone, Nearly Twice the Size of Dallas's
The driverless map now covers both ends of the Metroplex. Fort Worth's Robotaxi service began at 6 a.m. Monday — Tesla's first new city in about three months, its fourth in Texas, and a launch zone of 143 square miles against Dallas's 81.
Fort Worth woke up Monday inside the driverless map. Tesla opened its Robotaxi service in the city on Monday morning, its first new city in about three months and the fourth in Texas, CyberCab News reported. The company's official Robotaxi account announced the launch late Sunday in a single line — "Robotaxi available in Fort Worth starting tomorrow, 6am" — with a map of the service area, and rides began at 6 a.m. Central time on November 2.
The Fort Worth zone is not a token footprint. At 143 square miles it is nearly twice the size of Dallas's 81-square-mile zone, and it slots in third among the company's seven unsupervised-service cities, behind Austin at 272 square miles and Houston at 254, and ahead of the three smaller Florida zones — Miami at 31, Orlando at 26 and Tampa at 24. Add the four Texas cities together and the service now covers about 750 square miles of the state. The fleet behind it is growing on paper as well: Texas motor vehicle records, as tracked by Tesla watchers, listed 1,244 vehicles under Tesla Robotaxi LLC on Sunday — 671 Model Ys and 573 Cybercabs — just 15 behind Waymo's 1,259, though those are registrations, not a count of cars carrying riders.
What Tesla has not said is which vehicles will run in Fort Worth, or how many. For riders, the change is simpler than the fleet arithmetic: the app that has worked in Dallas now works at the other end of the Metroplex too, and a service that arrived city by city now spans the region's two anchors. Fort Worth is the seventh city in the network — and the first addition in about three months, which makes Monday's launch both a local transport story and a sign the expansion has restarted.
