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In a recent roundup of Tesla “Full Self Driving” (FSD) news, I mentioned Elon Musk tweeting that the number of Tesla Robotaxis on the road in Austin would “roughly double” in December. First of all, it’s important to note these are not truly driverless robotaxis yet, as Tesla still has human employees in the cars trying to make sure they don’t get into accidents. (Though, apparently, they are not doing a great job, as several accidents have reportedly taken place with these test robotaxis in the past few months.)
The weird thing about announcing that the fleet would “roughly double” is that Tesla has not told the public how many vehicles are in the fleet at the moment. I mean, that wasn’t stated at the start either. Tesla has never told us how many of these robotaxi prototypes are in operation in Austin, Texas.
However, a reader, Ole Laursen, noted under that article mentioned above that there’s a crowdsourcing effort to track Tesla Robotaxis. That tracker, Ole noted, “seems to be based on people documenting license plates.” The current tally is that there are 29 Tesla Robotaxis driving around in Austin.
Tesla is also operating test robotaxis in the San Francisco Bay Area for employees, and the tracker has the tally there at 106. So, if you have been curious of the fleet count or you are interested in checking out its growth regularly, there’s the site for you. It certainly beats Elon Musk’s occasional vague statements on the matter!
Are these good numbers or bad? Perhaps it depends on expectations. Tesla’s target was to have 500 robotaxis in the Austin area by the end of 2025. It doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. If you thought that was bullish, though, check out Deutsche Bank. Across San Francisco and Austin, Deutsche Bank proposed that Tesla could have 1,500 robotaxis roaming the streets of those cities before 2026.
Perhaps the bigger question is when Tesla will remove human safety drivers. That was supposed to happen in Austin in December 2025. I have a hard time believing that’s going to happen, considering how much the robotaxis have been crashing. However, if the humans weren’t doing their jobs stopping the crashes anyway, maybe there isn’t a point in having them in the cars? That depends on how many accidents they were preventing, of course. Who knows? More news at 11:00.
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