Tesla Expands Robotaxi Rides to San Antonio, Begins Service at 5 a.m.
Key Facts
Tesla began offering robotaxi rides in San Antonio at 5 a.m. local time on Monday, November 9, 2026, in a further expansion of its autonomous ride service in Texas. The company announced the start time in a post on X, according to TechCrunch. The city’s addition is part of the service’s expansion into new markets, but Tesla has not announced operational details that would establish the service’s scope or the size of its local fleet. The available evidence also contains no verified data on Tesla’s share performance in the November 9 session, so the launch cannot be linked to the stock’s performance that day. The last verified close in the available data was $358.22 on November 6.
Tesla has not specified robotaxi operating hours in San Antonio, or whether it will make its gold, two-seat Cybercab vehicles available to riders alongside modified Model Y cars. The company has also not said whether the vehicles will carry human safety monitors. These details leave practical questions about the types of vehicles available and the level of supervision during rides unanswered. In Austin, Tesla said in its third-quarter 2026 update that operating hours had been extended from 6 a.m. to midnight. The company said it expects to reduce wait times by increasing the number of vehicles and improving its robotaxi coordination algorithms; that information concerns Austin and does not establish San Antonio’s schedule.
Tesla began its robotaxi service in Austin in June 2025, then removed safety monitors from its vehicles there in January 2026, according to TechCrunch. In its second-quarter 2025 update, the company said it had launched the service in Austin with a safety monitor on board and was testing it in other U.S. cities ahead of further launches. In its third-quarter 2026 report, Tesla said it had begun adding Cybercab vehicles to its robotaxi fleet in Austin. The service had also logged nearly 2 million miles without supervision by the end of that quarter. These developments place the San Antonio launch in the context of an expansion that began with Austin, as the company gradually moves toward operating vehicles without safety monitors in its first city.
Tesla’s robotaxi operations remain geographically limited in other cities, with the service operating in specific areas of Miami, Orlando, Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston, according to TechCrunch. Data from the vehicle tracker cited by the report showed 24 vehicles in Fort Worth and five in Miami at the time of publication on November 9, 2026. These figures indicate the recorded presence in the two cities, but do not show how many vehicles the company will allocate to San Antonio. The service’s limited reach in existing cities also highlights that geographic expansion does not necessarily mean coverage of an entire city. Tesla has not provided an estimate for the San Antonio fleet or its coverage area.
Alongside the robotaxi expansion, Elon Musk said Tesla would stop Cybertruck production in about 8 months and would try to build as many trucks as possible before then. He added that the company “will have to refund a lot of people’s deposits” who had reserved the vehicle. Musk linked the decision to reallocating manufacturing capacity, saying that “the opportunity cost of Cybertruck complexity is far greater than the value of one more Cybercab.” He defended the decision by saying the truck is not unprofitable, while TechCrunch quoted him as saying demand for it exceeds production. The Associated Press reported that Musk announced in a post on Friday that production would begin to wind down around mid-2027 at the company’s facility outside Austin, Texas, making room to increase Cybercab production.
Cybertruck sales estimates put the decision in the context of the truck’s performance over the past two years. Kelley Blue Book estimated that Tesla sold 20,237 trucks in 2025, nearly half fewer than the previous year. Through the end of September 2026, sales had fallen a further 28% compared with the same period, according to estimates cited by the Associated Press. This points to continued declines in recorded truck sales as the company announces plans to end production and make more room for Cybercab. Musk cited a target of around mid-2027 for the end of production, while another statement described about 8 months remaining; Tesla has provided no further details in the available evidence on the production wind-down schedule or the amount of deposit refunds.