Tesla has expanded its fleet of unsupervised robotaxis to cover the entire Austrian metropolitan area, six months after it began phasing out human safety monitors from the service.
The company announced the wider rollout in a post on X, saying that fully driverless rides are now available across the whole metro region rather than in limited pilot zones. Tesla described the service as operating without an onboard safety driver or in‑car monitor, marking a full transition to unsupervised operations in the area.
The move mirrors an earlier expansion in Austin, Texas, where the service area for unsupervised robotaxis was extended to the entire Austin metro area following initial trials in smaller geofenced zones, according to Business Insider.
Tesla has not indicated whether the expansion to the entire Austrian metro area will be accompanied by an increase in the number of unsupervised robotaxis on the road.
Growing the fleet size will be essential to reducing passenger wait times and improving the service's overall reliability, as industry experts have noted in assessments of Tesla's robotaxi performance in Texas.
Users of Tesla Robotaxi have previously complained that the app can show unstable or rapidly changing estimated arrival times. On a weekday afternoon, customers in San Francisco were notified in the app that the service was experiencing "high service demand," highlighting the system's sensitivity to usage spikes.
Tesla first began offering public robotaxi rides without human chaperones in Austin in early 2026, after months of testing vehicles with monitors present.
Executives said at the time that a handful of driverless Model Y vehicles, running an unsupervised version of the company's Full Self‑Driving software, were being mixed into a broader fleet that still included safety‑monitored cars, Reuters reported.
In Austin, Tesla has also not made a major increase in its robotaxi fleet since the service's high‑profile launch last June, when the company initially operated with a limited number of vehicles and invited users.
Enthusiastic Tesla fans and influencers traveled to Texas to try the ride service at the outset, when the company was still placing a human monitor in the front passenger seat of each robotaxi.
Company leadership previously signaled that human monitors would remain in any new city for at least several months before being removed, subject to safety performance and local approval.
Elon Musk said in 2025 that the Austin launch would start with roughly 10 to 20 vehicles in operation. At that time, he set a target of reaching about 500 robotaxis in the city by the end of 2025, underscoring the company's ambition to scale the service quickly, as per ABC News.
Originally published on vcpost.com
