Tesla Robotaxi Now Operates in 4 U.S. Cities Without Driver Monitors, and Analysts Say This Is a Trillion-Dollar Market

Tesla’s robotaxi ambitions just crossed a serious threshold, and Wall Street is starting to put numbers on it that should make every Tesla fan sit up and pay attention.

Over the weekend, Tesla quietly expanded its unsupervised Robotaxi service to Dallas and Houston, bringing the total to four U.S. cities. No safety monitors. No drivers behind the wheel. Just Model Ys navigating real Texas traffic on their own. And the timing could not be more strategic, with Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings call hitting on April 22.

But the real story is what analysts are saying about where this is headed. Morgan Stanley’s Andrew Percoco just reaffirmed his $415 price target on Tesla, specifically pointing to the robotaxi expansion as a key catalyst. Check it out:

$TSLA – TESLA ROBOTAXI EXPANDS—NO DRIVER MONITORS

Morgan Stanley’s Andrew Percoco reaffirmed an Equalweight rating and $415 target on Tesla as it expands robotaxi service to Dallas and Houston.

Early reports suggest rides are operating without in-car safety monitors—a shift…

— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) April 20, 2026

That confirmation from Morgan Stanley carries weight. Percoco has been one of the more measured Tesla voices on the Street, and the fact that he held firm at $415 while flagging the shift to fully unsupervised rides tells you something about how seriously the institutional world is taking this rollout.

And it is not just Morgan Stanley paying attention. Tesla bulls who have been tracking the robotaxi program’s progress say the speed of this expansion is outpacing even Elon Musk’s own predictions from just a few quarters ago:

Tesla Robotaxi seemed to start off behind expectations. However, progress now appears ahead of even what Elon predicted? It is logical. Let me explain.

Tesla just launched UNSUPERVISED Robotaxis in Houston and Dallas over the weekend.

THIS IS HUGE!

In Tesla's Q3 2025 earnings…

— Doctor Jack (@DoctorJack16) April 20, 2026

The numbers backing this up are staggering. The Motley Fool broke down why analysts think this market could be massive:

Morgan Stanley analysts think robotaxis have an addressable market of at least $1 trillion in the U.S. alone. Light-duty vehicles traveled 3.4 trillion miles domestically in 2024. Even if robotaxis reduce current ridesharing rates by two-thirds, the market could approach $2 trillion.

CEO Elon Musk expects Tesla to have robotaxis in dozens of U.S. cities by the end of 2026. More ambitiously, Musk says autonomous ridesharing could move the financial needle for Tesla as early as the second half of 2026.

Let that sink in for a second. A trillion-dollar addressable market, minimum. And Tesla is the only company running fully unsupervised rides across multiple cities right now. Waymo is out there too, but Tesla’s approach of using vision-only AI on production vehicles gives it a fundamentally different scaling advantage.

IG International put the earnings context into perspective ahead of Wednesday’s call:

Tesla reports Q1 2026 results on April 22 after the U.S. close. Street consensus sits around EPS of $0.37 on revenue of $22.71 billion. The most consequential number on April 22 may not be EPS. It may be the incremental capital expenditure commentary around Terafab.

That last line is key. The Street is not just watching delivery numbers anymore. They want to know how fast Tesla can scale its AI infrastructure, because that is what powers the robotaxi fleet, the Optimus robots, and every other piece of the autonomy puzzle.

Tesla’s robotaxi coverage now spans Austin, San Francisco, Dallas, and Houston. Musk has said Las Vegas, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, and Tampa are all on the list for the first half of 2026. If that timeline holds, Tesla will be operating in nine cities before summer is over. The trillion-dollar future is not some abstract concept anymore. It is being built, one city at a time.