After Tesla launched its Robotaxi Network in Austin and ridesharing service in the San Francisco Bay Area, the big question for many has been: where is Tesla headed next? New job listings posted to Tesla’s website give us some clues on where Tesla is looking to expand next.
Tesla is hiring Autopilot ‘Vehicle Operators’ in numerous new cities throughout North America, something it must do before expanding to these new areas.
The job listings include both expanding the existing Austin and Bay Area networks and launching the service in new cities.
Expanding in Existing States
For current operations near Austin, Tesla is hiring operators specifically based in Houston, Dallas (Farmers Branch), and San Antonio. That’s a big spread that helps to push Robotaxi from one central city, Austin, to several other major Texas cities.
Over in California, Tesla is hiring in Palo Alto. Interestingly, the Palo Alto positions also mention the possibility of national and international travel. That tells us that Tesla could potentially keep these employees along for the long-term, and let them run international Robotaxi deployments, likely to Canada, Australia, and China - all three of which have relatively supportive autonomy regulations.
Reaching New Markets
For now, Tesla’s focus for Robotaxi is in the United States. We’ve checked their open positions internationally and haven’t seen any Autopilot Vehicle Operator listings in other countries at this point.
These expansions within the US are pretty broad and might actually be surprising. First up is Brooklyn, New York. This one is interesting, as New York has some extremely stringent autonomy testing regulations - ones that even Waymo is finding difficult to work around, as they have safety drivers in their vehicles today.
Next up, Phoenix, Arizona (in the Tempe area) and Las Vegas, Nevada (in the Henderson area) are two of the closest states to current deployments on the Western half of the United States.
On the Eastern half, Tesla is also building up for a major push into Florida, with listings in Tampa, Orlando (Clermont), Miami, and Jacksonville. That’s a fairly significant number of cities to be hiring in all at once, and it speaks to the open regulatory rules in Florida for autonomy. Tesla is clearly preparing for a large push into the Sunshine State, which will be interesting to see with the heavy tourist traffic in many of these cities.
Full List of Cities
Houston, Texas
Dallas, Texas (Farmer's Branch)
San Antonio, Texas
Palo Alto, California
Brooklyn, New York
Tampa, Florida
Orlando, Florida (Clermont)
Miami, Florida
Phoenix, Arizona (Tempe)
Las Vegas, Nevada (Henderson)
Laying the Groundwork for Expansion
These job listings for Autopilot Vehicle Operators are for both the individuals actually operating the Robotaxis and those riding along in Tesla’s Validation Fleet vehicles. It seems that Tesla will roll into new areas with Validation Fleets, and then open up the service with safety monitors (like in Austin) or drivers (similar to the Bay Area), depending on local regulations.
At some point, Tesla will then pull these vehicle operators out of the vehicles and into central hubs, where they can help debug issues and send actions to the vehicle when it gets stuck or needs additional help. This enables Tesla to effectively scale the Robotaxi Network across the country, without overstressing human resources, since those same drivers will then be able to support multiple vehicles.
The role of the validation fleets is important - Tesla is testing and finalizing FSD for local quirks and traffic challenges, and making sure that their model for general autonomy works everywhere as flawlessly as possible.
While a public launch in these locations isn’t imminent, the start of the hiring process is definitely an indicator that Tesla is serious about its national expansion plans and aiming to reach as many US cities as possible by the end of 2025. For now, the Robotaxi service remains active in Austin and the Bay Area, with access still limited to the select few under an invite-only group.
However, there may be a validation fleet coming to a city near you very soon.
