Tesla says it made its first driverless delivery of a new car to a customer

CNBC

13 hours ago

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the automaker completed its first driverless delivery of a new car to a customer, routing a Model Y SUV from the company's Austin, Texas, Gigafactory to an apartment building in the area on June 27.
The Tesla account on social network X, which is also owned by Musk, shared a video overnight showing the Model Y traversing public roads in Austin, including highways, with no human in the driver's seat or front passenger seat of the car.
Tesla did not say which version of its software and hardware had been installed and used in the car shown in the clip — or if and when that technology would be commercially available to its customers.
A Model Y owners' manual, available on the Tesla website, says that in order to use Tesla's Full Self-Driving (Supervised) option — which is the company's most advanced, partially automated driving system available today — owners must keep their hands on the wheel, and remain ready to take over steering or braking at any time.
The vehicle in Tesla's video was shown operating without a driver on the highway, passing through residential streets and around parking lots before arriving and stopping for a handoff to a customer. The buyer was waiting by the curb at an apartment building alongside Tesla employees, some sporting logo-emblazoned shirts. (The curb was painted red, indicating it is a no-stop fire lane.)
In 2016, Tesla shared an Autopilot video — known as the "Paint It Black" video — that had been staged in a manner which exaggerated its cars self-driving capabilities, depositions later revealed.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating Tesla over possible safety defects in their FSD systems, and recently sought more information from the company about its robotaxi debut after its cars were seen violating some traffic rules.
In posts on X on Friday, Musk wrote: "The first fully autonomous delivery of a Tesla Model Y from factory to a customer home across town, including highways, was just completed a day ahead of schedule!! Congratulations to the @Tesla_AI teams, both software & AI chip design!"
He also wrote, "There were no people in the car at all and no remote operators in control at any point. FULLY autonomous! To the best of our knowledge, this is the first fully autonomous drive with no people in the car or remotely operating the car on a public highway."
Musk's claim about the "first fully autonomous drive" on a public highway was not accurate. Alphabet-owned Waymo, which is already operating commercial robotaxi services across multiple U.S. cities, has been offering employees fully autonomous rides on Phoenix freeways since 2024, and has since expanded those rides to Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Head of AI at Tesla, Ashok Elluswamy, said in posts on X that the automaker "literally chose a random customer who ordered a Model Y in the Austin area" to participate. He also said the vehicle delivered is "exactly the same as every Model Y produced in the Tesla factory."
Elluswamy also noted in a post on X that the Model Y in the driverless delivery traveled at a "max speed of 72 mph." Most highways in Texas have a maximum speed limit of 70 miles per hour, according to the Texas Department of Transportation website.
Separately, Tesla began a robotaxi pilot program in Austin last weekend involving 10 to 20 of its Model Y SUVs equipped with technology, about which Tesla has revealed little to the public.
The Tesla robotaxi service is available only to select, invited riders who have mostly been influencers and analysts, many of whom generate income by posting Tesla-fan content on platforms like X and YouTube. The Tesla robotaxi vehicles run with a human safety supervisor on board in the front passenger seat, and are remotely supervised by employees in an operations center.
Since 2016, Musk has been promising that Tesla would soon be able to turn all of its existing EVs into fully autonomous vehicles with a simple, over-the-air software update. In his Master Plan, Part Deux, he outlined a future where every Tesla owner would be able to add their car to a "Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app," enabling their car to generate income for them while they sleep.
In 2019, Musk said Tesla would have 1 million robotaxis on the road by 2020 — a claim that helped him raise $2 billion at the time from institutional investors.
While Tesla has not fulfilled those promises thus far, the driverless delivery in Texas this week has elicited excitement among believers in Musk and his vision.
Meanwhile, Tesla is battling a brand backlash in response to the CEO's often incendiary political rhetoric, his endorsements of Germany's far-right extremist party AfD, and his work for the Trump administration.
Tesla sales have declined year-over-year in key markets, especially throughout Europe, in the first five months of 2025 partly as a result of that backlash. The company is also facing increased competition from EV makers, particularly Chinese brands such as BYD, Nio and Xiaomi, offering more affordable and newer models.
Tesla is expected to disclose its second-quarter vehicle production and delivery numbers on July 2.