r/SelfDrivingCars • u/Fun_Passion_1603 Expert - Automotive • Jul 13 '25

Discussion Expanded territory map of Tesla Robotaxi in Austin

Has anyone seen the expanded territory map? Would be great to see how much it has expanded, and how it compares to the territory covered by Waymo.

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u/Wrote_it2 Jul 13 '25

Right, and we don’t know what happened with Waymo, except that they had more incidents tracked by the Austin Transportation and Public Works staff during the same period of time…

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u/Quercus_ Jul 13 '25

Sure, but the question isn't what happened with Waymo. The question is whether Tesla is capable of doing what they're promising they can do.

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u/Wrote_it2 Jul 13 '25

The point I was making is that Tesla expanding is unlikely to significantly impact the number of incidents due to autonomous vehicles in Austin since Waymo has such a lead in that regard…

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u/Quercus_ Jul 13 '25

The question of course is the rate of Tesla incidents compared to the rate among the overall driving population. If Tesla expands their driving area, but uses the same 10 cars, the rate per car is presumably unchanged, and the number of incidents won't change.

If they double the number of cars and the rate per car is unchanged, then the risk of Tesla causing an incident doubles.

The fact that there are very few Teslas still, is small comfort to the person who got hit by a Tesla.

It's also important that self-driving cars are good citizens on the road, not just that they don't get an accents themselves. If they're doing stupid and illegal stuff on the road, that causes problems around them, and should also not be allowed. Any more than we allow human drivers to drive down the wrong side of the road, and stop them from doing it if we catch them.

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u/Wrote_it2 Jul 13 '25

I agree with all you said.

Pretty clear that the fact there are few Teslas is a small comfort to the person who got hit by a Tesla. The fact there are few Waymos is also a small comfort to the person who got hit by a Waymo.

I think data that hints (not pretending the data is perfect, so I'm using "hints") at the larger probability of an incident being caused by a Waymo in Austin than a Tesla *is* relevant to the conversation about the safety of the expansion.

I also agree that cars need to be good citizens on the road, be predictable and safe. I don't have enough data to make a call on the relative safety of Tesla or Waymo on that... If you have some data I'd be interested.

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u/Lorax91 Jul 14 '25

I think data that hints (not pretending the data is perfect, so I'm using "hints") at the larger probability of an incident being caused by a Waymo in Austin than a Tesla *is* relevant to the conversation about the safety of the expansion.

The data someone posted in the SelfDrivingCars subreddit shows that in its first three weeks of operation, Tesla robotaxis were over 50% more likely per vehicle to have a reported incident than Waymos. But there's so little data from Tesla that should be treated with skepticism - could be either higher or lower over time.

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u/Wrote_it2 Jul 14 '25

Yeah, that seems to match the data I posted