Tesla has expanded its autonomous ride-hailing geofence in Austin, Texas for the third time in just over two months, pushing the service perimeter west of the city to include the Monaco neighborhood, Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and the company’s Giga Texas factory. Several mapping estimates put the new service area at roughly 170 square miles, up from about 80 square miles after the previous revision. The latest enlargement makes Tesla’s coverage roughly 94 percent larger than Waymo’s 88-square-mile operating zone in the city and represents a 9.5-fold increase from the 18 square miles available when the beta program launched 65 days ago. The move underscores the company’s rapid push to scale its Robotaxi network ahead of anticipated wider commercial deployment. Separately, Tesla plans to introduce its supervised Full Self-Driving software in Australia on Aug. 29, marking the first rollout in a right-hand-drive market. The release, expected to run on Version 13 and initially support Hardware 4 vehicles, signals continued international expansion of the company’s driver-assistance technology.
Did you hear? @robotaxi service in Austin expanded again! https://t.co/LpNymdkoHI https://t.co/iLRKrUq6Tg
It looks as if the geofence is about 170 square miles in size, contrasting previous estimations of about 130 square miles. It's yet another doubling in size by Tesla in Austin with its Robotaxi geofence. https://t.co/zVJGnUHmtV
In the 65 days since launching its Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, @Tesla has expanded its geofence area by 9.5x (an 850% increase) from 18 to 171 square miles. https://t.co/3H9IglNacY