Gizmodo
In Austin, Texas, the battleground is clear. Tesla finally launched its long-delayed robotaxi service in late June, giving select influencers and shareholders access to its camera-only, Full Self-Driving (FSD)-powered Model Ys. At first, Tesla's service area was tiny. Then it expanded, marking the moment with a map shaped like, well, a crude joke.
Waymo, meanwhile, doubled its coverage in Austin from 37 square miles to 90 square miles, spanning most of the city and linking up with Uber for easy hailing. That's more than double Tesla's 42-square-mile footprint, and Waymo's cars are available to the general public, not just hand-picked Tesla fans.
Waymo has been playing the long game. It already runs robotaxi services in Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Austin, books more than 250,000 paid rides per week, and has partnerships to bring autonomous trips to Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Miami in 2026, and even Tokyo. It just started testing its cars in New York and Philadelphia. Next stop: 10 more cities by year's end.
Tesla, by contrast, is scaling from scratch. Its FSD system remains classified as Level 2—driver supervision required—though its robotaxi fleet runs driverless in limited geofenced areas. The difference in scale is stark: Waymo has roughly 1,500 autonomous vehicles today and plans to add 2,000 more next year, while Tesla's Austin fleet numbers in the low hundreds.
Waymo relies on lidar sensors, high-definition maps, and a cautious safety-first approach that critics call slow but steady. Tesla bets on cameras and neural networks, arguing that cheaper hardware and a massive data advantage from millions of customer vehicles will allow it to scale faster and cheaper once it's ready.
That difference shows up in the user experience: Waymo offers hands-off rides now. Tesla's long-term vision is that your personal car will moonlight as a taxi while you sleep, a future Musk says is inevitable. The question is when, and whether regulators, insurance companies, and passengers will buy in.
On paper, Tesla has the potential to catch up thanks to its massive data engine and vertically integrated fleet. But today, Waymo is winning, by a lot. Its service areas are larger, its rides are fully driverless and open to the public, and it's rapidly expanding to new cities. Tesla, by comparison, is still in pilot mode, with limited access and plenty of kinks to work out.
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