FORT WORTH, Texas - Tesla began offering Robotaxi rides in Fort Worth on Monday, opening its fourth Texas market and its seventh city in the United States where riders can hail one of its driverless cars. The service started at 6 a.m. Central time, after the company's Robotaxi account announced on X late Sunday that rides would be "available in Fort Worth starting tomorrow, 6am."
The new service area covers about 143 square miles, according to Where's the Driver, which cited the accessory maker Basenor. The map is centered on downtown Fort Worth and reaches north toward Saginaw, following Interstate 35W past Loop 820, west beyond White Settlement, southwest toward Benbrook and east to the edges of Haltom City and Forest Hill, Not a Tesla App reported. Riders inside the zone request trips through the Tesla Robotaxi app.
That makes Fort Worth the third-largest of Tesla's driverless service areas, behind Austin at 272 square miles and Houston at 254. Dallas, which Tesla opened earlier, covers 81 square miles, and its Florida markets are smaller still: 31 square miles in Miami, 26 in Orlando and 24 in Tampa. The launch gives Tesla two separate operating zones in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, though the company has not said whether they will be joined.
Not a Tesla App reported that, as in Tesla's other Texas markets, the Fort Worth rides carry no human safety monitor in the vehicle. Tesla did not disclose how many vehicles it had assigned to the city. In the San Francisco Bay Area, where its zone spans 1,098 square miles, every Tesla ride still has a safety driver behind the wheel under California law.
Fort Worth is the first new city for the service in about three months, since Tesla added Orlando and Tampa in late July. A late-October tally of Texas registrations counted 1,204 Tesla robotaxis, including 573 Cybercabs, Where's the Driver reported, just below the 1,259 vehicles registered to Waymo. Registration totals do not show how many cars are in service in any one city.
The Cybercab, Tesla's two-seat robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals, still carries public riders only in Austin. Ashok Elluswamy, who leads Tesla's self-driving software, said on the company's third-quarter earnings call on Oct. 21 that Cybercab rides would begin in Dallas next month. Tesla recently extended its Robotaxi hours to run from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m.