Finding
Driverless fleets are scaling fastest in Texas, and the constraint is moving from software to depots
Tesla's registered driverless fleet in Texas grew more than twentyfold in five months, from 42 vehicles in late May 2026 to 1080 in late October, 573 of them Cybercabs built at Giga Texas. Waymo is larger: more than 4,000 vehicles in 15 US cities and more than 500,000 paid rides a week, with plans reported by Semafor to reach about 8,000 by the end of 2026 and 20,000 by the end of 2027.
Every one of those vehicles is a fleet vehicle. A robotaxi has to be charged, cleaned, inspected and repaired between rides, and remote operators handle the cases it cannot. Waymo uses fleet partners for cleaning, charging and maintenance in Austin and Atlanta; a fivefold expansion in about 15 months is as much a question of depot sites, grid connections and staff as of driving software. See Autonomous Fleet Depots and Security and Teleoperations.
Texas is the proving ground for most of it: Waymo serves Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, Tesla runs its service from Austin, and Aurora's driverless trucks run I-45 and I-20 (AustinIO tracks the Texas robotaxi deployments). The same autonomy stack - sensors, perception, planning, compute and remote oversight - now runs in vans, trucks, yard tractors, mining haulers and farm machines; what changes is the operating domain.
Domains
Autonomous fleets by domain
Status is an ElectronsX summary.
| Domain | Leading operators | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Robotaxis | Waymo, Tesla, Zoox, Baidu Apollo Go, Pony.ai | Paid driverless service in US and Chinese cities |
| Driverless trucks | Aurora, Kodiak, Waabi | Driverless freight on Texas lanes |
| Driverless vans and delivery | Nuro and others | Pilots and limited service |
| Mining | Caterpillar, Komatsu | Hundreds of driverless haul trucks in mines |
| Agriculture | John Deere, Monarch | Driverless tillage and orchard work |
| Construction | Built Robotics, Caterpillar | Site-limited autonomy |
| Drones | Zipline, Wing, Amazon Prime Air | Delivery in limited US markets |
| Watercraft | Saildrone and others | Survey and patrol |
| Forestry | Various | Research and pilots |
Operators
US operators at a glance
| Operator | Fleet | Service |
|---|---|---|
| Waymo | 4,000+ vehicles | 15 US cities; 500,000+ paid rides a week; ~8,000 planned by end-2026 |
| Tesla | 1080 registered in Texas (Oct 28) | Austin service; Model Y and Cybercab |
| Aurora | 200 driverless trucks (year-end target) | Dallas-Houston, Fort Worth-El Paso, Dallas-Laredo, Midland |
Sources
Sources and scope
- Scope
- Robotaxi, driverless truck, delivery and off-road autonomous fleets
- Sources
- TxDMV Automated Vehicle Registry via texasavtracker.com (ElectronsX dataset); Waymo (September 2026); Semafor via Reuters (October 2026); Aurora (2026); AustinIO
- Updated
- October 2026