The Tesla Robotaxis have landed in Austin.
A day ahead of the supposed launch of the driverless car service in the capital of Texas, social media users have spotted a number of Tesla Model Y EVs driving around South Congress Avenue near the city’s downtown area—with no human in the driver’s seat.
Sunday is said to be the official launch of Tesla’s long-awaited Robotaxi service, which CEO Elon Musk has touted as the beginning of a new era for the company that’s powered by artificial intelligence and autonomy.
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Private invitations to try the service went out this week to various Tesla-adjacent influencers and social media users, although the launch is said to be fairly tepid at first. Musk has said it will commence with about 10 to 12 cars at the outset with human safety operators riding in the passenger seat. Another Robotaxi had been spotted in the same area in recent weeks.
Here are some of the videos and videos that appeared tonight on X, the social media network owned by Musk that’s formerly known as Twitter:
Several other videos appeared on TikTok tonight as well:
More sightings are expected to follow in the coming days as Tesla continues to scale the service.
The Austin launch marks the arrival of a long-awaited promise from Musk: fully autonomous Teslas that will eventually lead to his vision for cars without steering wheels or pedals. This, along with humanoid robots, is supposed to make Tesla the most valuable company on earth.
At the same time, countless questions remain about the viability of Tesla’s vision for autonomy. The driverless Tesla cars operate only with cameras and AI, not the LIDAR and sophisticated sensor suites of competitors like Waymo (which also launched in Austin in March).
Whether those systems alone can ensure a better-than-human driving experience and safety for everyone on the roads remains to be seen. A recent video from The Dawn Project, a group of Tesla critics, showed Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software failing to stop in time for a child-sized dummy crossing the street. The same systems will be put to use on Austin’s streets soon.
Meanwhile, Austin—which already struggles with traffic—is becoming a hotbed of autonomous vehicle deployment, as the New York Times reported recently. In addition to Waymo and now Tesla, the city has seen the deployment of autonomous vehicles from Amazon’s Zoox, Volkswagen and the startup Avride. We’ll see how the Teslas stack up soon enough.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com