Tesla robotaxi reaches Dallas and Houston, but fleet counts stay thin

Tesla has brought its robotaxi service to Dallas and Houston, TechCrunch reported on April 18, widening the company’s autonomous ride-hailing footprint beyond Austin. Videos cited by the report showed Tesla vehicles operating without a human monitor or driver in the front seat, a notable change from the heavily supervised launches that defined much of the robotaxi market.

The expansion gives Tesla three Texas robotaxi cities, but the available fleet signal is still modest. TechCrunch cited Robotaxi Tracker data showing one vehicle in Dallas and one in Houston, compared with 46 active vehicles in Austin. That gap matters: a geographic launch can change market perception, but the operating scale still determines whether the service is a product, a pilot or a regulatory test case.

Austin remains the reference point. Tesla began its Austin robotaxi service last year and started offering rides without safety drivers in January 2026. The same report notes that a February filing said Austin robotaxis had been involved in 14 crashes since launch. Tesla also operates a Bay Area service with human drivers, which keeps the California footprint in a different risk and regulatory category than the fully driverless Texas rides.

The AI story is not just that another city has been added. It is that Tesla is attempting to expand a camera-heavy autonomy stack into public streets while regulators, riders and competitors can compare claims against fleet size, incident data and service availability. Dallas and Houston make the map look broader; the next test is whether Tesla can increase vehicle counts while keeping safety data persuasive enough for more cities to accept the model.