Waymo responds to Tesla’s Robotaxi expansion in Austin with bold statement

Max Headroom 2025.07.18 3 min read

Waymo has responded to Tesla’s Robotaxi expansion in Austin with a bold statement by extending its own geofence by a considerable margin.

Earlier this week, Tesla chose to expand its geofence for its driverless Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, substantially. The geofence more than doubled, bringing Tesla’s total serviceable area within Austin to approximately 42 square miles.

Tesla’s Robotaxi geofence in Austin grows, and its shape is hard to ignore

This put Tesla ahead of Waymo in terms of its service area in Austin, as the company’s geofence was just 37 square miles.

We reported on how significant this statement was for Tesla, as it has only been operating its driverless Robotaxi platform in Austin for less than a month, compared to Waymo, which has been there since March.

Tesla Robotaxi has already surpassed Waymo in this key metric

Waymo took it as a challenge, it seems, and expanded its geofence, and it did it impressively and massively. Now, Waymo’s geofence spans 90 square miles within Austin, including new neighborhoods such as Crestview, Windsor Park, Sunset Valley, Franklin Park, as well as popular tourist destinations like The Domain and McKinney Falls State Park.

The move “unlocks another key milestone in Austin as our operating territory with Waymo expands from 37 to 90 square miles, which means that even more riders can experience Waymo’s fully autonomous vehicles through the Uber app,” Sarfraz Maredia, Global Head of Autonomous Mobility & Delivery at Uber, said.

Additionally, Shweta Shrivastava, Senior Director of Product Management at Waymo, said:

“Just months after serving our first Austin riders with Uber, we’re excited to offer our 24/7 service to more of the city. The service with our partners at Uber is healthy, and we are ready for more Austinites to experience the magic of fully autonomous driving. Austin remains one of the fastest growing cities in the country, and we are doing our part to grow with it.”

Across the U.S., this expansion brings Waymo’s service area to more than 700 square miles, as it also operates in California and Arizona.

Here’s what the two geofenced regions look like:

Here’s a comparison of Tesla Robotaxi vs Waymo geofences in Austin https://t.co/6jIaDwBm2I pic.twitter.com/B9jiCIU21F

— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 17, 2025

The competition between Waymo and Tesla only benefits consumers, as the two companies are evidently sparring for a larger service area in Austin. Tesla launched its interestingly-shaped geofence expansion on Monday, and it seemed that the shape was more of a joke that could also be construed as a warning to competitors.

Tesla could more than likely have pushed its geofence to a larger size, but it purposely chose to do so in a comical fashion.

Now that Waymo has responded in this way, we’ll see if Tesla puts the jokes aside.

The post Waymo responds to Tesla’s Robotaxi expansion in Austin with bold statement appeared first on TESLARATI.

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