Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Cars

Watch Tesla’s self-driving Model Y perform a world first

By
Autonomous Tesla Delivery | Full Drive

In what is being described as a world first, a new car has just driven itself from the factory to the customer’s home all by itself, with no one inside the vehicle.

The feat was performed by a Tesla Model Y on Friday, with the electric-car maker posting a video (top) of the car’s journey, which used Tesla’s driver-assist Full Self-Driving (FSD) system to reach its destination.

And this wasn’t just a simple journey from Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory in Austin to a residential address five minutes away. The trip took 30 minutes and really put the FSD system through its paces.

Related:
Watch passengers take the first rides in Tesla robotaxis

“This Tesla drove itself from Gigafactory Texas to its new owner’s home 30 minutes away — crossing parking lots, highways, and the city to reach its new owner,” Tesla said in a comment accompanying the video, adding that the journey marked ”the first autonomous vehicle delivery of its kind in the world.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk was clearly delighted by the achievement, posting on X that the autonomous delivery had been completed a day ahead of schedule.

Musk added: “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.” However, as noted by some of those responding to his post, Alphabet-owned Waymo has been operating fully driverless vehicles on public highways for more than a year, so Musk is wrong on this point.

Autonomous self-delivery like this has the potential to streamline the car delivery process, reduce costs, and eliminate trips, whether it’s the customer heading to the dealership to pick up their new car, or staff heading back to base after dropping it off. It’s a given that Tesla would like to deliver more of its new cars in this way, but it’s not clear what its immediate plans are for such a system.

The first-ever autonomous vehicle delivery can be marked down as a win for Tesla, and offers it some positive coverage in the wake of some less than celebratory headlines regarding its recently launched robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, a week ago.

Shortly after its 10 Model Y robotaxis hit the road, reports emerged of some of the vehicles appearing to violate road rules as they carried passengers from A to B. The cars are being monitored remotely by Tesla staff and also have a human safety monitor in the front passenger seat who can intervene at any time.

Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Topics

Editors’ Recommendations

Tesla posts exaggerate self-driving capacity, safety regulators say
Beta of Tesla's FSD in a car.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is concerned that Tesla’s use of social media and its website makes false promises about the automaker’s full-self driving (FSD) software.
The warning dates back from May, but was made public in an email to Tesla released on November 8.
The NHTSA opened an investigation in October into 2.4 million Tesla vehicles equipped with the FSD software, following three reported collisions and a fatal crash. The investigation centers on FSD’s ability to perform in “relatively common” reduced visibility conditions, such as sun glare, fog, and airborne dust.
In these instances, it appears that “the driver may not be aware that he or she is responsible” to make appropriate operational selections, or “fully understand” the nuances of the system, NHTSA said.
Meanwhile, “Tesla’s X (Twitter) account has reposted or endorsed postings that exhibit disengaged driver behavior,” Gregory Magno, the NHTSA’s vehicle defects chief investigator, wrote to Tesla in an email.
The postings, which included reposted YouTube videos, may encourage viewers to see FSD-supervised as a “Robotaxi” instead of a partially automated, driver-assist system that requires “persistent attention and intermittent intervention by the driver,” Magno said.
In one of a number of Tesla posts on X, the social media platform owned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a driver was seen using FSD to reach a hospital while undergoing a heart attack. In another post, a driver said he had used FSD for a 50-minute ride home. Meanwhile, third-party comments on the posts promoted the advantages of using FSD while under the influence of alcohol or when tired, NHTSA said.
Tesla’s official website also promotes conflicting messaging on the capabilities of the FSD software, the regulator said.
NHTSA has requested that Tesla revisit its communications to ensure its messaging remains consistent with FSD’s approved instructions, namely that the software provides only a driver assist/support system requiring drivers to remain vigilant and maintain constant readiness to intervene in driving.
Tesla last month unveiled the Cybercab, an autonomous-driving EV with no steering wheel or pedals. The vehicle has been promoted as a robotaxi, a self-driving vehicle operated as part of a ride-paying service, such as the one already offered by Alphabet-owned Waymo.
But Tesla’s self-driving technology has remained under the scrutiny of regulators. FSD relies on multiple onboard cameras to feed machine-learning models that, in turn, help the car make decisions based on what it sees.
Meanwhile, Waymo’s technology relies on premapped roads, sensors, cameras, radar, and lidar (a laser-light radar), which might be very costly, but has met the approval of safety regulators.

Read more
Are self-driving cars the death of car ownership?
Tesla Cybercab at night

Self-driving cars are coming. It remains to be seen how long that will take. Plenty of vehicles can more or less drive themselves on highways, but for now, they still can't completely reliably drive themselves on all streets, in all conditions, taking into account all different variables. One thing is clear, though: the tech industry sees autonomous driving as the future of personal transportation, and they're spending billions to reach that goal.

But what happens when we get there? Tesla made headlines for not only announcing its new Cybercab fully autonomous vehicle, but simultaneously claiming that customers will be able to buy one. That's right, at least if Tesla is to be believed, the Cybercab doesn't necessarily represent Tesla building its own Uber-killing fleet of self-driving cars, but instead giving people the ownership over the self-driving car industry.

Read more
Tesla’s Elon Musk unveils the Cybercab robotaxi — and also the Robovan
Tesla's robotaxi.

Tesla boss Elon Musk has just taken the wraps off a prototype of the automaker’s long-awaited robotaxi.

Tesla’s CEO performed the unveiling at a special event at the Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, California, on Thursday night after being driven to the stage by the new autonomous vehicle. The "Cybercab," as Musk is calling it, sports a futuristic look and comes with butterfly doors that open upwards. The electric vehicle has ditched the steering wheel and pedals, and uses inductive charging instead of a plug. You can see the driverless Cybercab in action in the video below:

Read more