Tesla · 25 Oct 2026

Tesla's Texas Robotaxi fleet hits 938 as Austin rides reach the F1 track until 1am

Tesla added 135 vehicles to the Texas driverless registry in eight days, taking its total to 938 as of Saturday evening, 24 Oct (Texas time), and most of the new ones were Cybercabs. At the same time, Austin's Robotaxi map was stretched southeast to Circuit of the Americas and, according to the first report, the service day was pushed to 1am, just in time for Sunday's United States Grand Prix. Here's what's confirmed, what's reported and what the numbers say.

From Alex RTesla

🏎️

— Robotaxi (@robotaxi) October 24, 2026

Post: Tesla's official Robotaxi account (@robotaxi), quoting Sawyer Merritt's report and geofence map (map: @SawyerMerritt).

What changed in Austin

The first report came from Tesla investor and commentator Sawyer Merritt, who posted at 1:59 a.m. ET on Friday, Oct. 23 (10:59 p.m. PT Thursday; 06:59 Irish time in your time zone) that Tesla had "expanded its Robotaxi service area in Austin" to include "the area around Austin's F1 racetrack," and that the service "now runs until 1 AM (from 12 AM before)." His map shows a new red wedge on the southeast edge of the old geofence, reaching toward Circuit of the Americas (COTA).

Independent site Robotaxi Tracker, which maps Tesla's service areas, put the expansion at 8 square miles, a 3.0% increase that takes Austin to 272 square miles in total. On Saturday, Tesla's own @robotaxi account quoted Merritt's post with a single race-car emoji.

What's confirmed and what isn't: the bigger map comes from Merritt's report and Robotaxi Tracker's mapping; the 1am close comes from Merritt's report. Tesla's official account effectively acknowledged the post, but in the posts I could find as of early Sunday (Irish time) it hadn't spelled out the new hours or said whether they are permanent or just for race weekend.

Why this weekend matters

Race weekend is about as busy as that corner of Austin gets. The Formula 1 United States Grand Prix at COTA runs Oct. 23 to 25, with the 56-lap race starting at 3 p.m. local time on Sunday, which is 4 p.m. ET (1 p.m. PT; 20:00 Irish time in your time zone). In Ireland that's 8 p.m.: Irish clocks went back an hour this morning; US clocks don't change until Nov. 1, so for this race Austin is five hours behind Ireland instead of the usual six. Merritt's post put attendance for the weekend's festivities at 400,000 people.

That makes it the toughest public test Tesla's Austin service has faced: huge crowds, closed and rerouted roads near the track, and a flood of people wanting rides at the same moment after the checkered flag. My read: getting the geofence to the track before Friday's first practice session, rather than after, looks like a deliberate choice to be there for it.

The closing time keeps moving later

Austin's closing time has now moved three times this month:

That's three extra hours of service in about three weeks, and the midnight close lasted only about a week. Austin still hasn't matched the 2am close it reached in September 2025, according to Teslarati, and I haven't found a firm date from Tesla for round-the-clock service.

The fleet: 803 to 938 in eight days

The Texas DMV publishes a list, by VIN, of every automated vehicle authorised to operate in the state under its SB 2807 rules. Robotaxi Tracker posts each change, and its latest update on Saturday at 5:39 p.m. ET (2:39 p.m. PT; 22:39 Irish time in your time zone) showed 11 more Cybercabs, taking Tesla to 938. Adding up the tracker's posts since my last fleet report gives this:

Tesla just registered 11 more autonomous vehicles with the Texas DMV—938 now on the state registry, up from 927.

11 × 2026 Tesla Cybercab

— Robotaxi Tracker (@RtaxiTracker) October 24, 2026

Graphic: Robotaxi Tracker (@RtaxiTracker), using the Texas DMV automated-vehicle registry. Data also at robotaxitracker.com.

My math: Cybercabs are leading the additions again

When I last checked, Tesla's Texas fleet was 454 Model Ys and 349 Cybercabs, and the newest batch had been all Model Y. Since then, by my count of the tracker's posts:

That 507/431 split is also what Robotaxi Tracker's Texas registry page and the FSD Database mirror of the DMV list show. Some summaries on X put the Cybercab figure at 433, but neither registry mirror shows that.

A few things stand out. The fleet grew about 17 vehicles a day over the eight days, and Cybercabs were about 61% of the new registrations (82 of 135). The 69-car Cybercab batch on Friday was the one that pushed Tesla past 900 for the first time, which the tracker flagged in its post. And the mix swung back fast: a week after a run of Model Y-only batches, three of the last five batches were all Cybercab.

It's worth being clear about what the registry measures. These are vehicles Tesla has registered as automated vehicles in Texas, not a live count of cars carrying riders at any moment, and Tesla doesn't publish Cybercab production numbers. Registrations also arrive in lumps, so one week's pace isn't a forecast.

Update, 25 Oct 2026: The registry kept growing after this was published. The next morning’s check of the TxDMV list (via FSD Database) showed 463 Cybercabs and 507 Model Ys, 970 Teslas in total. The Cybercab tracker always shows the latest count and its time. The figures below are as of 24 Oct.

How 938 squares with our Cybercab tracker

Our Cybercab tracker showed 420 registered Cybercabs on Saturday. That is the same Texas registry count, taken before the 11-car batch landed on Saturday evening, and the tracker showed 431 once it landed.

The tracker's other figure, about 1,109 Tesla robotaxis across all states, measures something different. Following Platform Aeronaut's AV tracker, it adds the Texas registrations (927 at the time) to third-party estimates of 164 Tesla robotaxis in the Bay Area (dated Aug. 26) and 18 robotaxi-configured Model Ys spotted in Florida (dated July 22). With 938 in Texas, that estimate is now about 1,120.

So 938 is a count of registrations in one state, and about 1,120 is a rough national estimate built partly on older, unofficial numbers. Neither one counts the cars carrying riders right now.

How Austin compares with Waymo

Robotaxi Tracker also estimated on Oct. 22 that Tesla logged 438,000 driverless miles in Austin in the week to Oct. 18, against Waymo's 406,000 a week from its Q2 2026 data. The tracker itself cautioned that these are "different periods, so Waymo's next release will give a better picture." It's a useful early signal, not a settled ranking.

What's next, and what's still a promise

On Oct. 21, the day of Tesla's Q3 results, the @robotaxi account listed four new cities as "coming soon": Las Vegas, Jacksonville, Phoenix and San Antonio. Those are announcements, with no launch dates attached. In Austin, the open questions are simple: whether the 1am close and the COTA extension stay after race weekend, and when the service day goes from 19 hours to 24.

The bottom line: in about a week, Tesla's Texas fleet grew by roughly a sixth, Cybercabs became the main source of new supply again, and the Austin service reached its biggest crowd of the year with longer hours. Sunday's race is the first real stress test of all three at once.

Sources: Sawyer Merritt on X: Austin geofence expanded to the F1 track area, service until 1am (Oct 23, 2026); Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) quoting that report (Oct 24, 2026); Robotaxi Tracker: Austin service area up 8 sq mi to 272 sq mi (Oct 23, 2026); Robotaxi Tracker, Texas DMV registry page and its batch posts linked in the table above; Robotaxi Tracker: Tesla vs Waymo weekly driverless miles in Austin (Oct 22, 2026); Formula 1: 2026 United States Grand Prix timetable; @robotaxi: cities "coming soon" (Oct 21, 2026); @robotaxi: service roundup confirming 6am–11pm hours (Oct 12, 2026); TeslaNorth: Austin hours move to 11pm (Oct 3, 2026); FSD Database, Texas Robotaxi Database (mirrors the TxDMV list); Platform Aeronaut AV Tracker, Tesla Robotaxi; Teslarati on Austin's 2025 hours. Registry splits and percentages are my own math from those posts.

— Alex R