Tesla beats old Waymo data in Austin, not national robotaxi race — SkimNews
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- Tesla logged 438,000 driverless miles in Austin during the week of October 18, 2026, a 30% increase from the prior week, enabled by a surge in Cybercab deployments.
- Waymo averaged 406,000 weekly driverless miles in Austin from April to June 2026, according to its Q2 safety data, making Tesla’s comparison against older averages misleading.
- Elon Musk declared the robotaxi race with Waymo 'was never a real contest' after Tesla briefly exceeded Waymo’s outdated Austin mileage figures.
- Robotaxi Tracker shows Tesla’s national driverless mileage peaked at 558,000 miles in one week, while Waymo averaged 3.90 million rider-only miles weekly in Q2 across multiple cities.
- Ashok Elluswamy stated on Tesla’s Q3 earnings call that Robotaxi operations are limited by software constraints, not regulators, citing avoidance of highways, rail crossings, and weather-sensitive conditions.
- Waymo has operated on freeways in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles since November 2025, while Tesla’s Austin vehicles reroute to avoid infrastructure like rail lines, inflating mileage.
Why it matters: Tesla’s narrow Austin surge doesn’t reflect broader autonomy capability—Waymo drives 7x more weekly miles nationally and operates in more complex conditions. The misleading comparison benefits Tesla’s narrative but obscures that its software remains functionally limited, affecting investor and public perception of its technological lead.
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