Tesla CEO Elon Musk declared at a Smart Mobility Summit in Tel Aviv this week that the company’s fully autonomous driving technology is already in operation in three Texas cities without human safety drivers behind the wheel and is anticipated to roll out to a growing number of U.S. Markets before the end of 2026. The declaration of the company’s expanding fully autonomous driving initiative represents a significant leap forward in Tesla’s long-held ambition for wide-scale vehicle autonomy, and a speed-up of the company’s commercialization of its autonomous driving efforts.
“We already have some vehicles operating with no people inside and no safety monitors in three cities in Texas and probably will be widespread in the U.S. By the end of this year,” Musk said at the summit. Tesla is currently operating a fully autonomous ride-hailing service in three Texas cities – Austin, Dallas and Houston. Tesla’s Austin operations – the flagship of its fully autonomous driving rollout, have given it almost 700,000 fully autonomous rides to validate the technology commercially, while building up a wealth of safety data. Tesla began its commercial launches in Dallas and Houston on April 2026, a decisive turn toward full scaling of its autonomy program.
Seven additional U.S. Cities will join Tesla’s fully autonomous ride-hailing network in the first half of 2026: Phoenix, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Las Vegas-an intelligent expansion to Sun Belt cities with desirable climates for autonomous operations. Tesla has already hired fleet support specialists in nine cities at once, suggesting that its planned expansion is in the process of being implemented, rather than solely conceptual. Tesla expects to operate robotaxi operations in nine U.S. Markets by mid-2026.
Current fully autonomous Tesla operations are based on modified Model Y vehicles equipped with Tesla’s latest Full Self-Driving software, but Tesla is anticipating the production ramp of a Cybercab that will serve as the backbone of its future fully autonomous ride-hailing fleet, a two-seater, no-wheel, no-pedals robotaxi that is projected to be launched at scale in 2026. Elon Musk said at the first quarter 2026 earnings call that production of its Cybercab has officially started, and output is scaling exponentially.
The autonomous vehicle competition in this market continues to heat up, as Waymo, Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle subsidiary, has five cities in operation with over 500,000 weekly rides and has released performance reports based on tens of millions of autonomous miles driven that highlight their performance and safety data. Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco called Tesla’s current autonomous expansion a ‘tangible sign’ of progress and predicted strong commercial flywheel from the Tesla network if it successfully scales. Elon Musk, who for years predicted that autonomously driven vehicles will comprise the vast majority of the miles driven globally, indicated that the dawn of the robotaxi era is upon us.
