Tesla launches robotaxis in Dallas and Houston, and oops, it’s already unavailable

Tesla claims to have launched a robotaxi service in Dallas and Houston over the weekend, but so far, online crowdsourcing tools indicate that very few cars are actually available.

On Saturday, @TeslaRobotaxi posted a 14-second video of a Model Y vehicle driving without any human safety monitor in the front seats. Elon Musk re-posted the video, adding, “Try Tesla Robotaxi in Dallas & Houston!”

But as of Sunday evening, the service appeared to be largely unavailable, according to Robotaxi Tracker, an online data site that tracks autonomous ridehailing services. There were brief spikes of availability on Sunday afternoon and evening, but by Monday morning, the service in both cities was listed as “unavailable.” By comparison, Tesla’s robotaxi service in Austin shows 46 vehicles available, according to the tracker. The service areas in both cities appear to be fairly small: 31 square miles in Dallas and 25 square miles in Houston.

It isn’t unusual for a robotaxi operator to start small in a new city before scaling up. Waymo, for example, also recently launched in Dallas and Houston with only a handful of vehicles. The Alphabet-owned company has an estimated 16 vehicles in Dallas and a single robotaxi in Houston, according to the tracker.

Naturally, that could change rapidly if Tesla decides to deploy more vehicles. But the rocky start and the curious timing, several days before Tesla is schedule to report its first quarter earnings on Wednesday, has some calling this another stock pump.

This wouldn’t be the first time Tesla announced robotaxi news in the day before an earnings report — the company said it had launched unsupervised rides in Austin a few days before its Q4 earnings, causing the stock to jump several points. Those unsupervised quickly evaporated after the earnings report, in which the company reported its second consecutive year of declining revenue and profits.

Questions about safety continue to dog Tesla’s robotaxis, as well. In February, Tesla reported that its robotaxis had been involved in 14 crashes since its launch last year. Unlike other robotaxi operators, Tesla redacts key details about these incidents from its report to the federal government, so its difficult to ascertain the severity of the incidents.

Early reactions to Tesla’s new service in Dallas won’t diminish those concerns. @TexasTSLA posted a video on X over the weekend that seems to show an unsupervised Tesla robotaxi mistakenly ending up on a freeway before forcing a remote operator to take over and look for a place to pull over.