Tesla says its Robotaxi service now offers rides 24 hours a day in all eight cities. The company announced the change yesterday, November 11th, ending the overnight shutdown.
In August, Tesla offered rides from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., a 16-hour window. The new schedule adds eight hours of potential service each day. This could be helpful to people staying late out at night and needing a way to get home without taking a traditional Uber.
Tesla Gradually Extended Robotaxi Hours
Tesla first pushed closing time to 11 p.m. in early October, then midnight in mid-October, according to Not a Tesla App. By October 29, service ran for 20 hours from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily, according to TeslaNorth. The Robotaxi app later showed a 5 a.m. opening, extending its window to 21 hours.
Tesla’s Robotaxi website lists five Texas cities: Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth, and three in Florida: Miami, Orlando and Tampa. In the San Francisco Bay Area, rides still have a human driver for supervision. Though, for Austin, rides are limited to certain areas. An independent check found the app accepted pickups or drop-offs in about 59% of Austin’s earlier map, as EVXL reported.
Nighttime driving was a concern during the rollout. In October, Elon Musk stated that it was difficult to spot animals in the dark. Tesla previously targeted round-the-clock operation by the end of 2026. An earlier target was October, according to Not a Tesla App. Tesla has now fulfilled the year-end target and its next goal would be to offer Cybercab rides beyond Austin, starting with Dallas.
A 24-Hour Schedule Does Not Guarantee a Ride
Tesla’s announcement does not include how many vehicles will be operating overnight. Passengers can book only when their pickup and destination are supported and a car is available for service.
Independent Robotaxi Tracker estimates put Tesla’s driverless fleet at about 666 vehicles nationwide on November 9th, compared with more than 4,000 for Waymo, according to Electrek. These are estimates that have been reported independently and are not Tesla’s own figures. Tesla had 1,302 vehicles on Texas’s driverless registry on November 10th, EVXL reported, but that list does not show how many are carrying riders.
EVXL’s Take
Going from 16 hours to 24 hours is a meaningful improvement, particularly for late-night and early-morning riders. But operating hours are only one measure of service. Tesla needs enough available vehicles at those times for the expansion to matter. How long overnight wait times are and how many completed rides there are would tell us more than the improved schedule alone.
Sources: Tesla Robotaxi on X, TeslaNorth, Not a Tesla App, Electrek.
EVXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting is by Damien Kesteloo, edited by Haye Kesteloo.
