Tesla's Robotaxi service opened to riders in San Antonio at 5 a.m. local time on Monday, Nov. 9. Tesla announced the launch on its Robotaxi account on X just after midnight San Antonio time, with a map of the zone it plans to serve. San Antonio is the eighth city where Tesla offers Robotaxi rides, joining Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston in Texas and Miami, Orlando and Tampa in Florida.
Each city's service is limited to a zone drawn on a map, and in Tesla's app riders can only choose a destination inside the area it shows. According to a news report, Tesla's map runs from just south of downtown north to the Loop 1604 highway. The same report says a site that measures these maps puts the zone at about 274 square miles, more than four times the area Waymo serves in the city. It also says Waymo began driverless rides there in February 2026 and opened to all riders, airport trips included, in October.
Riders book through Tesla's Robotaxi app for iPhone and Android, signing in with a Tesla account, and see an estimated fare and wait time before they confirm. Tesla says it charges a simple introductory rate for now, and that riders may not sit in the front-left seat, where a driver usually sits. A reporter who rode on launch day paid $16, a news report says, for a trip he said cost about $23 on Waymo and about $16 on Uber.
A map is not the same as service. The news report with those measurements also says the city's airport sits inside Tesla's zone but isn't served. The same news report says a man who tracks Tesla's service tried thousands of addresses in the Robotaxi app in six Tesla cities. He found pickups and drop-offs allowed in 59% to 78% of the area Tesla showed at the time, with Austin lowest at about 59%. Tesla made its Austin zone bigger on Nov. 9, the day San Antonio opened.
Tesla has not said how many cars serve San Antonio, what its introductory rate is, or how much of the zone on its launch map riders can actually book.