Tesla's plans for Robotaxi dominance hit major snag in Austin

Perhaps Elon Musk’s greatest and most valuable attribute as Tesla’s CEO is getting investors to stick with him as his company works through the details of his grand declarations.

The $40,000 Cybertruck, Tesla Cybercab, and Roadster all represent promises made, and broken, by Musk in recent years, but he has also delivered on a bunch of promises as well, including the budget Model 3, the $90,000 Cybertruck, and a stock that is 120% higher than it was five years ago.

Tesla performance benchmarks for Elon Musk $1 trillion payout20 million Tesla vehicles delivered10 million active FSD subscriptions1 million bots delivered1 million Robotaxis in commercial operation$400 billion of Adjusted EBITDA over four separate quarters

However, he has yet to fulfill his biggest promise. The one that, according to wide-eyed investors such as Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood, will launch Tesla into stratospheric valuations: autonomy.

Specifically, Robotaxi.

Tesla has teased its Robotaxi program since Musk first mentioned it in 2016. In 2024, Musk claimed there would be 1 million of them on the road by 2025.

There are significantly fewer than that as of mid-2026, and people who use the service in Austin, Texas, where Robotaxi debuted last summer, wish there were many, many more.

Tesla is still falling short on Elon Musk’s promise of a million Robotaxis on the road.

Photo by Bloomberg on Getty Images

Tesla Robotaxi customers in Texas face long wait times for a cab

A Reuters reporter recently tried to test Robotaxi in Austin. Eight times a day for three weeks in April, they tracked wait times for Tesla Robotaxis in Austin.

The wait times exceeded 15 minutes about half of the time, and were at least 25 minutes late more than a quarter of the time. And 27% of the time, no cars were available at all.

Tesla is just a few months shy of a year of operating in Austin, and the company has about 50 Robotaxis operating in the city of more than 1 million residents. And while Tesla for months has been saying it has already phased out the human safety monitors that used to sit behind the wheel, some Robotaxis in Austin still have safety monitors in the front passenger seat,” according to Reuters.

Waymo, which has operated robotaxis in Austin through a partnership with Uber for about 18 months now, has five times as many vehicles in Austin as Tesla, according to the Austin American-Statesman. In addition, Waymo never has a human other than the passenger in their vehicles when they pick up customers.

Plus, the Austin American-Statesman notes, the average wait time in Austin for a Waymo-powered Uber is about three to six minutes during regular operations and 10 to 15 minutes during peak periods. The Robotaxis reporters ordered had wait times of 29 minutes and 13 minutes, respectively, which were almost on par with the Reuters reporter’s experience.

Last month, Tesla expanded its Texas footprint to Dallas and Houston, but the company is having similar issues in those new locations, according to Reuters.

Related: Tesla FSD hits major speedbump with EU regulators

One reporter using the service in Dallas spent nearly two hours to take what would normally be a 20-minute, 5-mile drive in the city. Another reporter tried booking a ride, but kept seeing either a high-demand message or one that said “no rides available nearby.” After 36 minutes of searching, a car finally did appear available, but the wait time was 19 minutes.

The Dallas reporter who went 5 miles in two hours was dropped off when he was still a 15-minute walk from his destination. When he pushed the “support” button in the vehicle, the agent said the area was restricted, even though it was inside the Dallas service area map that Tesla had posted on Twitter last month.

Deutsche Bank puts Tesla Robotaxi in focus in 2026

Robotaxi is at the forefront of most Tesla investors’ minds, including Elon Musk’s.

But last year, the company struggled to even approach fulfilling the promises Musk made about Robotaxis’ progress.

“I think we will probably have autonomous ride-hailing in probably half the population of the U.S. by the end of the year,” Musk said during the opening remarks of the company’s second-quarter earnings call in July, Barchart reported.

By the third-quarter call in October, Musk had struck a much more sober tone. He preached being “cautious about the deployment,” saying that the company’s goal now was to be “actually paranoid about deployment” because, as he put it, “even one accident will be front-page headline news worldwide.”

But analysts at Deutsche Bank don’t believe the company has time to be paranoid in 2026.

Tesla reported its second consecutive year of declining deliveries in 2025, and analysts expect the company to face challenges with demand again in 2026. But Deutsche Bank analysts also expect investors to look past the low volume and to a future driven by autonomous Robotaxis.

“While the autos business at Tesla may underperform in 2026, we think more attention is directed towards the company’s robotaxi expansion and efforts at humanoid development,” Deutsche Bank analysts said in a recent note.

Related: Rivian gets serious about challenging Tesla FSD with latest move

#Tesla039s #plans #Robotaxi #dominance #hit #major #snag #Austin