Tesla’s new rocket-shaped Robotaxi service area in Houston includes parts of downtown where the service won’t actually pick you up, according to Ethan McKanna, the creator of Robotaxi Tracker and former Tesla employee.
McKanna rode the service after Monday’s expansion and called Houston “by far the most egregious ‘fake’ AV service area” he has seen. One trip quote had him spending about 40 minutes in a Robotaxi to go two blocks.
On Monday, Tesla expanded its Houston Robotaxi geofence into the shape of a rocket. It took the small launch zone in northwest Harris County and stretched it into a long corridor down to downtown and Bellaire, announced with “Houston, we have liftoff.”
McKanna runs Robotaxi Tracker, the crowdsourced site that tracks Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet and service areas, and he worked at Tesla this summer, so he knows the program better than most. He went to Houston to try it out. Here’s what he posted last night:
The video shows the Robotaxi app with a pickup pin dropped in downtown Houston, well inside the polygon Tesla published. The app refuses it: “Location not available. Move the map to select a different location.”
McKanna acknowledged that AV service area maps are often “kind of fake,” since operators don’t serve every street inside the polygon they advertise. But he singled out Houston as the worst case he’s seen and said he understands Tesla did it “so they could get the starship shape,” which doesn’t seem like a good reason to fake availability.
About 40 minutes to go two blocks
The day before, he posted a trip quote that shows what this looks like for a rider:
The app quoted a 2:05 pm pickup on the east side of downtown and a 2:48 pm drop-off at Houston Police Department headquarters on Travis Street, a couple of blocks away. Instead of cutting across downtown, the planned route runs south through Midtown and the Museum District to the Texas Medical Center area, then loops back north.
McKanna’s read is that the Robotaxi appears to be avoiding railroad crossings downtown, and he said it fits with “other strange routing in Houston.” He expects Tesla to fix it.
To be fair, he wasn’t down on the service overall. He wrote that, apart from that issue, it “feels really good in Houston,” with reasonable wait times and “significantly better driving than my recent Waymo rides.”
Waymo’s map isn’t perfect either
Tesla isn’t the only one. On Tuesday, Robotaxi Tracker reported that Waymo’s Orlando service area had shrunk by 10 square miles, down 8.4% to 109 square miles. McKanna explained what happened:
Orlando’s airport was inside the map Waymo published, but McKanna checked the app and it won’t let riders set the airport as a drop-off yet. So the tracker took it out. Waymo’s airport service might be rolling out soon, and someone got ahead of the announcement.
That’s an airport on the edge of the map. In Houston, the dead zone is in the middle of downtown.
Electrek’s Take
First, a big thanks to Ethan. Tesla shares very little data about its Robotaxi program, and Robotaxi Tracker has become the best independent source on where Tesla’s fleet actually operates and how big it is. And as Orlando shows, he holds Waymo to the same standard.
Every AV operator has gaps in its map, Waymo included. But Waymo’s Orlando gap is an airport on the edge of the map that it’s likely about to add. Tesla’s Houston gap is downtown, and it drew a rocket first and figured out where the cars could actually go second.
Service and product should always outrank marketing, and that’s clearly not the case with Tesla’s Robotaxi. People rely on those maps to know if Tesla offers the service where they are. Faking the map just to make a rocket shape is completely stupid. Do better.
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