Only a few days after launching a restricted robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, Tesla pulled off an extra stunt meant to point out off the progress of its self-driving automotive software program. The corporate let a Mannequin Y SUV drive roughly 15 miles from Tesla’s manufacturing unit to the condominium complicated the place the automotive’s new proprietor lives, finishing what CEO Elon Musk referred to as the primary “autonomous supply” of a buyer automotive.
The car was supposedly outfitted with the identical software program Tesla’s robotaxi Mannequin Ys are utilizing in Austin, however upon supply was downgraded to the commercially obtainable Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software program that requires drivers to concentrate and be able to take over at any second. Nobody was on board and Musk claimed no distant help was given to the automotive.
The stunt got here at an auspicious time for Tesla, which is about to launch second-quarter supply figures this week and monetary outcomes for the interval later this month. These numbers are anticipated to be grim for Tesla, which noticed gross sales fall in 2024 — earlier than Musk took a chainsaw to the corporate’s public picture by getting concerned with the Trump administration. Certain sufficient, Tesla’s inventory value shot up late Friday after Musk first posted concerning the drive (though it has since fallen after a tough day of buying and selling Monday).
I used to reside within the metropolis and have pushed by way of this space of South Austin lots; the trail the Mannequin Y took was complicated, even on a shiny, sunny day in the midst of the afternoon. Within the 30-minute video of the journey (Tesla additionally posted a sped-up model that lasts round 3.5 minutes), the automotive merges on and off of a freeway, turns proper on crimson, navigates a small roundabout, and makes an unprotected left flip.
These had been difficult situations for autonomous automobiles that had been in improvement just some years in the past, so it’s hanging to see a automotive navigate them multi function go in actual day-to-day visitors.
Tesla’s not the one one that may sort out this mixture of highways and floor streets. Waymo automobiles have been driving on highways in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco (to this point, just for staff), and even Zoox gave us a driverless trip throughout a mixture of 45-mile-per-hour roads and facet streets in Las Vegas in January.
Whereas Tesla’s video of the drive is simple, it evokes a listing of questions. One of many greatest is about what sorts of preparations Tesla made earlier than letting this automotive by way of the manufacturing unit door.
It’s a related query as a result of Tesla famously launched and promoted a video of considered one of its vehicles supposedly driving itself by way of the Bay Space (with an worker performing as a security operator within the driver’s seat) in 2016 that was, at greatest, deceptive and, at worst, primarily staged.
On the time, Tesla made that drive appear easy. However the firm had pre-mapped the route and tried it a number of occasions earlier than the drive proven within the video, with the automotive requiring that the security operator take management. Tesla engineer Ashok Elluswamy stated in a 2022 deposition that the “intent of the video was to not precisely painting what was obtainable for purchasers in 2016. It was to painting what was doable to construct into the system.”
Musk was additionally intimately concerned within the making of that video.
Tesla automobiles have been noticed utilizing lidar and different exterior sensors within the space of South Austin the place the restricted robotaxi trial is going down — had been these automobiles used to prep this specific drive? We’ve requested Tesla, however the firm now not responds to media requests.
Additionally, can Tesla’s software program safely run this route dozens of occasions with out intervention (in-car or distant)? A whole lot of occasions? 1000’s? Doing this as soon as is an accomplishment, nevertheless it’s the flexibility to repeat this sort of drive and do it safely that’s the final check of whether or not the know-how is dependable.
What’s extra, this buyer supply drive lives within the shadow of a a lot greater promise Musk as soon as made (additionally in 2016, though he has repeated it in years since) about how Tesla’s self-driving software program would be capable of take a automotive from Los Angeles to New York Metropolis with none intervention.
As is the case with the early robotaxi check, there’s nonetheless lots we don’t find out about how effectively issues are going, and the way any of that is imagined to scale.
One factor that appears notable, although, is that worst criticism Dan O’Dowd, one of the outspoken critics of Tesla’s FSD software program, may increase in an e mail to TechCrunch concerning the supply drive was that the automotive in the end got here to a cease in a hearth lane exterior the brand new buyer’s condominium. A good criticism, however a minor one coming from a man whose group was hurling child-sized dummies in entrance of Mannequin Y SUVs just some quick weeks in the past.
