Tesla's Real Robotaxi Geofence vs the Advertised One
Real addresses were typed into Tesla's Robotaxi app to see where it really picks you up. Here's the real geofence next to the advertised one, with Waymo in Houston too.
Tesla's Robotaxi app shows a service area for every city. If your house is inside it, you'd figure the car will come pick you up there.
A lot of the time it won't. So real addresses were tested to find out where it will.
How it was tested
Real addresses were typed into the Robotaxi app one at a time, and each answer was written down. Either it picks up right at the address, it gives you a spot nearby to walk to, or it won't take the ride at all. Across six cities, that's enough to draw the real geofence.
The advertised geofence comes from the service area data the app downloads, so it's the exact shape Tesla shows you on the map.
What I found
Across Houston, Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, Miami and Orlando, the car picks up at the door in 69% of the area Tesla advertises. That's 555 of 810 square miles. If you count the walk-to spots, most cities get close to the full geofence. I go by door to door, since that's what I'd expect from a robotaxi.
- Dallas: 77% door to door
- Houston: 75%
- Fort Worth: 73%
- Orlando: 71%
- Miami: 61%
- Austin: 59%, the lowest. It's split into 28 pieces with 89 holes in it*
- San Antonio: coming soon
I also counted how many people live in each one using 2020 Census blocks. About 3.15 million people live inside Tesla's advertised geofences. About 2.63 million of them live where the car will come to their door.
Geofence Tracker
I put everything on the Geofence Tracker page. Each city shows Tesla's advertised geofence as a dashed red line and the real one filled in red, with how many people live inside each. There's a switch for walk-to pickups. Waymo is in blue, and both can go on the map at once.
Tampa is coming soon. Testing there just started, and there isn't enough yet to trust. The advertised map is already up.
Waymo Houston is done too, and it went the other way. Its real geofence is 55.3 square miles and the advertised one is 48.9, so that's 113%. The app allowed a pickup almost everywhere inside Waymo's geofence, plus another 6.1 square miles outside it.
The rest of the Waymo cities are next. Austin and Atlanta can't be tested, since Waymo there is only on Uber and there's no Waymo app to test in.
It's not in the menu, so this post is the only link to it. Bookmark it:
kobypierce.com/geofence-tracker