Tesla Robotaxi travels 2.3 miles in 66 minutes. Customers are dropped 3 miles from their destination and have to take Uber.
Tesla is facing more complaints about its Robotaxi service in Texas, this time from its own fans and brand ambassadors. In one report, a ride of 2.3 miles was supposed to take 66 minutes, while in another case, the car dropped off a passenger 3 miles from the destination because it was too late.
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This no longer seems like an isolated glitch in the app but rather a problem with the entire autonomous driving service.
2.3 miles, 66 minutes, and no refund until the post went viral
On August 22, Reggie Overton, who identifies himself as a “Tesla Ambassador,” described a Robotaxi ride that turned into an absurd experience instead of a normal trip. The destination was 2.3 miles away, but the app showed a travel time of 1 hour and 6 minutes.
After contacting customer service, he was told it was a bug. The estimated time dropped briefly to 16 minutes, though as he wrote himself, “the actual route didn’t change at all,” before rising back to 57 minutes. The consultant confirmed they saw the same result but couldn’t change the route and only suggested that Overton “leave a review.”
The situation was resolved by changing the destination, getting out of the car, and ordering an Uber. Overton wrote outright, “For a 2.3-mile trip, this was an incredibly frustrating experience,” and added another comment: “I didn’t even get a refund.”
A refund was issued only later, after the post received over 630,000 views. Tesla Robotaxi’s official account then replied that the company had refunded the money “earlier today” and would be working to improve the passenger experience. Poor. This is more like putting out a PR fire than proper customer service handling.
I had a horrible experience with Robotaxi, and unfortunately, support wasn’t able to help.
My destination was only 2.3 miles from my pickup location, yet the Robotaxi estimated it would take 1 hour and 6 minutes to get there. I couldn’t believe it, so I called support. They… pic.twitter.com/HlIE5r785F
— Reggie Overton (@reggieoverton) August 22, 2026
Another user: 3 miles from the car, pickups skipped and manual driving by support
This isn’t the only such report. The TexasTSLA account from Dallas, run by a owner of four Teslas, has been showing a series of failed trips in a small area approved by Tesla for several days now.
On August 17, a user wrote that the Robotaxi “dropped me off 3 miles away from my car because it was too late at night”. The support team replied that nothing could be done as it was the end of their shift. That same evening at 9:30 PM, the app displayed a message saying “destination exceeds vehicle’s remaining service time”.
Two days later, the user experienced three rides in one day. On the second ride, the car “panicked” and missed the drop-off location, forcing support to “manually drive us to our destination”. On the third ride, the car passed by passengers multiple times during pickup until the group simply walked away.
On August 21, TexasTSLA also shared a video of a car that “glitched out” and got stuck right in the middle of the road. An earlier post from April, when the service started in Dallas, showed a Robotaxi missing an exit off the highway and trying to stop while traffic was moving at 80-90 mph.
Tesla Has a Short Test Distance and Many Complaints
This gets interesting. Tesla previously confirmed 380,000 miles driven without supervision from January to July 2026. That’s about 15,000 miles per week. With such a volume of similar recordings and complaints, there are simply many of them.
For comparison, Waymo operates over 500,000 paid driverless rides per week in more than 10 cities across the U.S., and it doesn’t have such a continuous stream of videos showing missed pickups or dropping off passengers anywhere.
Tesla is now preparing a Cybercab event scheduled for September 3 in Austin. The problem is that driving itself is only half of the robotaxi process. The other half involves routing, pickup, dropoff, and handling exceptions. And it is in this area that Tesla is currently putting the most effort into.
I wonder how many more such stories will surface as the service expands. Do you think Tesla should start charging for Robotaxi now that support still covers one car per order?
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