A former Tesla employee rides the expanded Houston Robotaxi map and calls it partly "fake"
From the Robots digest for Oct 28, 2026
Sources Electrek
What happened: Tesla's rocket-shaped Houston service-area expansion includes downtown blocks where the service won't actually pick riders up, according to Ethan McKanna, creator of Robotaxi Tracker and a former Tesla employee, per Electrek (published October 28, ~11:18 AM ET). McKanna rode the service after the October 26 expansion and called Houston "by far the most egregious 'fake' AV service area" he had seen; one trip quote had him spending about 40 minutes in a Robotaxi to go two blocks.
What's genuinely new: The first named, first-hand account challenging the functionality of the expansion map — a direct contradiction of the geofence-growth framing, from a tracker creator with an inside history at Tesla. Earlier coverage of the Houston rollout carried expansions and fleet numbers; this carries a documentable map-versus-service discrepancy.
Watch: Whether Tesla revises the Houston pickup map or the app's service boundaries, rider reports from inside the areas that do work, and whether the discrepancy draws any regulator attention.