Tesla passes Waymo on Texas's driverless-vehicle register, 1,302 cars to 1,297

Tesla Robotaxi now has more vehicles authorized to drive without a human in Texas than Waymo: 1,302 to 1,297 as of Nov. 10, Teslarati reported, citing an independent tracker of the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles (TxDMV) register. EVwire's own check of the register on Nov. 11 gives the same totals. A batch of 20 Model Ys put Tesla ahead. Its list now holds 729 Model Ys and 573 Cybercabs, the purpose-built robotaxi, according to EVwire.

The lead is in permits, and Tesla's permits now run well ahead of its service. Two days earlier, Robotaxi Tracker counted 666 Tesla robotaxis in service nationwide, 453 of them in Austin, Electrek reported. Texas alone now lists nearly twice that many Teslas. The register shows how many cars a company may run without a driver. It does not show how many are giving rides, EVwire notes.

Tesla added 222 cars in 12 days, Waymo 38

The state's own report, with data as of Oct. 29, listed Waymo at 1,259 vehicles and Tesla at 1,080, out of 3,164 from 17 companies. Avride had 344, and the list also includes autonomous trucking firms such as Aurora with 91 and Kodiak with 36. Between that report and Nov. 10, Tesla added 222 vehicles and Waymo 38. When the register went public at the end of May, Tesla listed 42 vehicles to Waymo's 577, The Next Web reported.

The two lists are built differently. Waymo's is 874 Jaguar I-PACEs and 423 Zeekr-built Ojai vans, EVwire found by decoding vehicle identification numbers. On Tesla's, 44% are the purpose-built Cybercab.

In Austin, the miles already favor Tesla

The strongest case against reading the list as paperwork is Austin. Tesla's cars drove 438,000 driverless miles there in the week ending Oct. 18, Electrek reported, citing Robotaxi Tracker's figures from the companies' safety reports, more than the roughly 406,000 a week Waymo averaged in Austin in the second quarter. Nationally the gap runs the other way: Waymo drove 3.90 million rider-only miles a week in the second quarter, about seven times Tesla's best week of 558,000, and the tracker counts more than 4,000 Waymo driverless vehicles to Tesla's 666.

San Antonio shows the gap in one city. Tesla opened rides there on Nov. 9 across a 274-square-mile zone, and that morning Robotaxi Tracker had yet to log a single Tesla robotaxi in it.