A significant milestone was achieved by Tesla as it completed its first fully autonomous vehicle delivery from factory to customer. The journey of a Tesla Model Y from the company’s Austin Gigafactory to a customer’s apartment building was captured in a video posted on X. The vehicle navigated the highway, suburban sprawl, and residential neighborhoods without any human intervention.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, had initially set June 28th as the target date for the first fully autonomous delivery. Surprisingly, the milestone was reached a day ahead of schedule, as announced by Musk on Friday.
Musk shared on X, “There were no people in the car at all and no remote operators in control at any point. FULLY autonomous!” This achievement is believed to be the first instance of a fully autonomous drive on a public highway without any human presence in the vehicle or remote control.
Despite the success of this autonomous delivery, Tesla faced challenges with its robotaxi service launch. Initially, safety monitors were present in the vehicles with access to a kill switch. However, incidents such as crossing into oncoming traffic and abrupt braking raised concerns.
By demonstrating the capability to operate fully autonomous vehicles on highways without safety monitors, Tesla is inching closer to achieving Musk’s vision of “unsupervised” driving. While the robotaxis still require supervision, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system is making progress towards autonomous driving.
Update, June 28th: Added Tesla’s 30-minute “long version” of the trip.
