Tesla Completes First Driverless Delivery in Austin

A Tesla Inc. Model Y drove itself 15 miles from the company’s Gigafactory Texas to an Austin apartment building Friday — the electric automaker’s first driverless delivery.

CEO Elon Musk announced the successful delivery on X, the social media platform he owns, saying the vehicle drove on highways and arrived a day ahead of schedule.

"There were no people in the car at all and no remote operators in control at any point. FULLY autonomous!" he wrote.

Musk’s claim that it was the first fully autonomous drive on a public highway wasn’t entirely accurate. Alphabet’s Waymo, for instance, has been operating commercial robotaxi services across the U.S. and expanded to Austin in March. Waymo’s vehicles frequently drive on highways in cities including Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Tesla’s head of artificial intelligence, Ashok Elluswamy, posted on X that Tesla selected a "random customer" in Austin who had ordered a Model Y for the delivery. The customer, Jose Fernandez, waited alongside Tesla employees outside his luxury apartment complex on South Lamar Boulevard to receive his silver Model Y.

Tesla posted a video showing the vehicle — with no passengers in the driver’s or front passenger’s seat — navigating from the factory at 1 Tesla Road, east of Texas 130. The car drove on highways, residential streets and around parking lots before arriving at Fernandez’s apartment about 30 minutes later. It parked in a no-stop fire lane to meet Jose and the team. According to Elluswamy, the vehicle reached a speed of 72 mph during the trip.

Since 2016, Musk has been promising that Tesla would soon lead the autonomous vehicle market. In 2019, he said Tesla would have 1 million robotaxis on the road by 2020, a claim he did not fulfill. Tesla’s autonomous robotaxi service launched in Austin this month.

The service is currently available only to a select group of invitees, primarily Tesla social media influencers and analysts who earn income through Tesla-related social media content. The robotaxis operate within a restricted area in Austin, bounded by East Riverside Drive and Texas 71 to the north and south, and by Texas 183 and Texas Loop 1 to the east and west. Each ride costs a flat fee of $4.20, which is less than Waymo rides, which run for the same amount as a typical Uber ride. Tesla currently has about 20 robotaxis operating in Austin.

"We want to deliberately take it slow," Musk told CNBC in May. "I mean, we could start with 1,000, 10,000 on day one, but I don’t think that would be prudent. So we will start with probably 10 for a week, then increase it to 20, 30, 40."

Each robotaxi, a Tesla Model Y equipped with the newest version of Full Self-Driving software, has a Tesla employee sitting in the front passenger seat as a safety supervisor. The vehicles are also monitored remotely by staff at an operations center.

Tesla’s limited rollout occurred just days after Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation mandating a state permit for self-driving vehicles and requiring specific information to aid first responders. The law, set to take effect Sept. 1, came alongside a request from Austin-area lawmakers urging Tesla to delay the service until it can demonstrate compliance with the new regulations.

The rollout, which Musk has touted as key to the struggling company’s rebound, has hit some bumps along the way as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is still investigating Tesla’s FSD, recently contacted the company after several online videos showed Tesla’s robotaxis violating traffic laws.

Tesla relies on cameras and machine learning for its self-driving system. Other companies, like Waymo or Amazon’s Zoox, also use cameras and machine learning, but add LiDAR, which are lasers, and radar to provide more input to the self-driving software.

Musk has frequently spoken about leading the autonomous vehicle market, but Tesla has lagged behind competitors. Multiple operators offer services in China, and Waymo is now active in around five U.S. cities, including Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Austin as of March. Roughly a decade ago, Tesla showcased its autonomous technology in the "Paint It Black" video, though it was later revealed that the Autopilot demonstration was staged, exaggerating the vehicle’s self-driving capabilities.

With his autonomous robotaxi vision, Musk has said he wants his automaker’s vehicles to drive themselves to customer doors when possible, but it remains to be seen how frequently the driverless delivery system will be used near Tesla’s factories.