Episode Details

Tesla has launched its unsupervised robotaxi service in Dallas and Houston over the weekend, but catching a ride wasn’t a walk in the park for some users—and the few that did were in for some unwanted surprises.

First off, the problem is the service area in each city is small—30 square miles in Dallas and 25 square miles in Houston. That means Tesla’s self-driving car service covers less than 10 percent of Dallas, which has an area of 385 square miles, and less than 4 percent of Houston (approximately 650 square miles).

And that’s not all. According to a third-party robotaxi tracker, Tesla only has one Model Y robotaxi in each city, and each car has logged less than 10 rides at the time of writing. No wonder people had a difficult time finding cars on the Tesla Robotaxi ride-hailing app.

This Dallas Trip Was a Glitch Fest

😞 Tesla @robotaxi in Dallas fails to read the sign correctly and refuses to turn on red 😖

Angry driver honks 4 times and finally goes around! 🤬🤬🤬

It turned on red at other lights but I think this sign confused it 😭 pic.twitter.com/eB3GPVMnR6

— TexasTSLA (@TexasTSLA) April 19, 2026

Dallas resident Chris Ramos told Business Insider he waited almost two hours for a ride, and when he finally got one, it was a pretty wild one. While the self-driving Model Y handled city driving smoothly, it did have some difficulty reading signals; for example, it failed to realize that it could turn right at a red light, being repeatedly honked at by other drivers.

The real problems started when the robotaxi missed an exit and entered a highway. It picked up speed to keep up with traffic, which was going at 80 to 90 mph, but then it suddenly started to slow down looking for a spot to pull over.

Welcome to Dallas bud 😅😅🤣

Dear @Tesla FSD users have said multiple times nav and map data is 🥔 and needs to be improved @robotaxi misses its exit!

ROBOTAXI DRIVES ON THE HIGHWAY and freaks out!!

THEN TRIES TO PULL OVER AS TRAFFIC IS FLYING BY 80-90mph!!!

Rider… pic.twitter.com/MNBTlarMlP

— TexasTSLA (@TexasTSLA) April 19, 2026

One of the videos Chris (@TexasTSLA) posted on X.com shows the vehicle screen displaying the following message: “Vehicle is finding a safe location to pull over.” That’s not something you want to see when you’re on the highway, and that made the passenger feel unsafe. Then suddenly a Tesla support agent chimes in to assist the rider, only for the connection to break seconds later.

Is Tesla Beta Testing Its Robotaxi Service on Real People?

Guess @robotaxi in Dallas needs a map update like the rest of us FSD users 😅😅

It tried to d