AUSTIN, Texas — Tesla's much-anticipated robotaxi service continued to face withering scrutiny on Thursday as new data and user reports confirmed persistent wait times exceeding 45 minutes in core Austin zones, with availability collapsing entirely in suburban areas outside a narrow downtown corridor. The rollout, which Tesla CEO Elon Musk had framed as a transformative commercial launch, has instead become a focal point for criticism over the gap between the company's ambitious promises and operational reality.

Into that vacuum stepped Waymo, Alphabet's autonomous vehicle subsidiary, which announced Thursday that its Austin fleet had completed more than 500,000 cumulative paid rides since entering the Texas market, making it the fastest market expansion in the company's history. Waymo said it would add 50 additional Jaguar I-PACE vehicles to the Austin pool by the end of May, targeting the South Congress and East Riverside corridors where Tesla coverage has been thinnest.

Industry analysts said the contrast could not be more stark. 'Tesla bet on a thin deployment to generate headlines, while Waymo has been methodically building density,' said Sam Abuelsamid, principal analyst at Guidehouse Insights. 'Density is the entire product in robotaxi — without it, the service is essentially unusable for most people, and trust erodes fast.'

Tesla declined to provide updated fleet size figures for Austin, citing 'ongoing operational calibration.' The company's communications team pointed reporters to aggregate safety statistics showing zero serious incidents since launch, framing reliability as the primary metric rather than availability. Several Tesla investors, however, expressed concern on social media and in analyst notes that the availability problem was a structural issue tied to the company's camera-only sensor approach rather than a software tuning gap that could be patched quickly.

The developments come as the broader autonomous vehicle sector prepares for a pivotal summer, with Waymo's San Francisco and Phoenix networks already logging millions of rides annually and regulatory filings pending in Dallas and Miami. For Tesla, Thursday's headlines represented a reputational test — one that the company's supporters hope can be addressed through rapid fleet expansion, but that sceptics argue points to deeper limitations in the Autopilot-derived Full Self-Driving stack underpinning the robotaxi platform.