Elon Musk announced that Tesla is planning to roughly double its Robotaxi fleet

Elon Musk announced recently that Tesla is planning to “roughly double” its Robotaxi fleet in Austin next month. Just last month, Musk explicitly stated that Tesla aimed to have 500 Robotaxis in Austin by the end of the year. Now, “doubling” the current estimated fleet suggests the actual number will be closer to 60.

We have been closely tracking the rollout of the “Tesla Robotaxi” pilot in Austin, which launched back in June using Model Y vehicles.

Unlike the “Cybercab” unveiled in October, these vehicles are standard Model Ys equipped with Hardware 4, and critically, they are not driverless.

The service has been plagued by availability issues. As we reported recently, users in Austin are frequently met with “High Service Demand” messages, with wait times often exceeding 40 minutes. It’s not necessarily because there’s really “high demand”, but because Tesla’s ‘Robotaxi fleet” remains tiny.

In response to complaints about the service being “essentially unusable” due to lack of supply, Elon Musk took to X (formerly Twitter) late Tuesday to promise relief:

“The Tesla Robotaxi fleet in Austin should roughly double next month.”

For those frustrated by the wait times, more cars are certainly welcome. But for investors and analysts tracking Tesla’s autonomous driving promises, this announcement serves as a confirmation of a significant missed deadline.

How many Tesla Robotaxis are in Austin?

To understand why “doubling” is actually a disappointment, we have to look at what Musk promised just a few weeks ago.

During his appearance on the All-In Podcast, which aired on October 31, 2025, Musk was explicitly asked about the scale of the fleet. His answer was unambiguous:

“We’re scaling up the number of cars to… probably we’ll have a thousand cars or more in the Bay Area by the end of this year, probably 500 or more in the greater Austin area.”