Tesla's Seventh Robotaxi City Wasn't on Its Own Coming-Soon List

Tesla announced Fort Worth rides the evening before they began, after listing Las Vegas, Phoenix, Jacksonville and San Antonio as its next four cities without dates, according to a published report.

A footprint plan built on Tesla’s published list would have missed Fort Worth, because the city was not on it. Tesla has not said how many vehicles serve Fort Worth or what a ride costs there, the two figures that would put a cost per mile on the launch.

How big is the Fort Worth zone?

Tesla shared a launch map but no area. Sawyer Merritt, a Tesla watcher who shared a list of Tesla’s service areas on X, put the zone at 143 square miles, which would rank third among Tesla’s unsupervised markets behind Austin at 272 square miles and Houston at 254. Robotaxi Log, a tracking site, traced the same map at about 104 square miles.

Both estimates top Dallas, where Tesla’s service area covers about 81 square miles. Fort Worth is a separate market, not an extension of Dallas: Arlington, Grand Prairie and Irving sit between the two zones, so riders cannot travel between the cities.

What did the list leave out?

Tesla posted the list less than two weeks before the launch, the report said, and none of the four cities on it has opened. In between, Tesla announced a roughly tenfold expansion of the Houston zone, the report said, so the network grew in two directions at once: a larger Houston and a city no list had named.

That leaves the plan’s timing with Tesla. The company gave no date for any listed city, and Fort Worth arrived without one.

What does a ride cost Tesla?

Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja told analysts on the third-quarter earnings call that Tesla is still working toward 30 cents per mile for Robotaxi, according to a call recap. Reaching a per-mile figure takes a fleet count and fares, and Tesla disclosed neither for Fort Worth.

The nearest outside count is statewide. Robotaxi Tracker counted 1,051 Tesla robotaxis registered in Texas in late October, 544 of them Cybercabs, the two-seat model with no steering wheel or pedals. The count does not break out Fort Worth.

Vice President of AI Software Ashok Elluswamy said on the same call that Cybercab rides start in Dallas in November, the recap said, the next dated step on Tesla’s Texas map.