
Elon Musk’s early birthday present to himself—the first Tesla just drove itself from its factory straight to the customer
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An Austin official told Fortune it had no choice in the matter: 'the City does not have the authority to regulate these vehicles.'
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June 28, 2025
05:51 PM
Fortune
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·TeslaElon Musk’s early birthday present to himself—the first Tesla just drove itself from its factory straight to the customerBY Christiaan HetznerBY Christiaan HetznerSenior ReporterChristiaan HetznerSenior ReporterChristiaan Hetzner is a senior reporter for Fortune covering the auto industry and Europe’s changing landscape
SEE FULL BIOElon Musk, who turned 54 on Saturday, celebrated his birthday with another milestone in Tesla's self-driving gram
Brendan Smialowski—AFP via Getty ImagesIn its second milestone in a week, Tesla arranged for a Model Y crossover to drive itself from its Texas factory to a customer in downtown Austin some 30 minutes away
It s the successful launch of its robotaxi service this past Sunday
City officials, however, told Fortune they had no choice in the matter: “the City does not have the authority to regulate these vehicles. ” Tesla celebrated a historic first on Friday when a new Model Y left the factory in Austin and—without anyone in the vehicle—drove itself to a waiting customer a half-hour away
Already the second milestone this week after the commercial deployment of his robotaxi service, it marks an early birthday present for CEO Elon Musk
The entrepreneur had mised it to Tesla supporters for June 28, which is coincidentally when he turns 54 years old. “The first fully autonomous dery of a Tesla Model Y from factory to a customer across town, including highways, was just a day ahead of schedule,” Musk posted on Friday. “There were no people in the car at all and no remote operators in control at any point
FULLY autonomous. ” Since this is completely unsupervised full-self driving (FSD) in its first-ever practical application for the brand, Tesla uploaded a as of
It documents from various angles the roughly 30-minute drive from the Austin factory to 1515 S
Downtown, where its new owner took possession
Whether this dery is just a one-off test or part of a broader plan to revamp distribution remains un
While it might in theory on at least part of the $1,390 destination fee Tesla charges, it risks scratching or denting the vehicle in transit—or even just arriving at the customer dirty, looking it had just been through a rainstorm
First time that a car has dered itself to its owner
Co/xgZBRDaMiX— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2025 Additionally, the Model Y’s range maxes out at an official 357 miles with real world tests indicating a lower range
Unless it could drive from one Tesla service center to the next, so that an employee could recharge it, the range would limit it to a radius inside Texas
Lastly, regulations on the ground could make it outright illegal as state governments currently determine under what conditions autonomous vehicles, if at all, can drive on their roads
Timing advantageous as Tesla poised to report steep Q2 sales drop In the case of Austin, for example, city officials told Fortune they had no say in what Musk’s company did. “Tesla made the City aware of their intent to der a fully autonomous vehicle,” a spokesman for the Texas state capital said. “While the City does not have the authority to regulate these vehicles, we will continue to work with the company to vide back if public safety issues arise. ” The autonomous dery also elicited skepticism as to whether Tesla might be misleading people into believing the nology is more robust than it really is
Some pointed to the fact the was not ed, but rather uploaded later
In addition, the robotaxi service that began operation in Austin on Sunday still only operates during certain hours, does not drive to the airport, and features a safety monitor in the front passenger seat at all times
World's first autonomous dery of a car
This Tesla drove itself from Gigafactory Texas to its new owner's ~30min away — crossing parking lots, highways & the city to reach its new owner pic
Com/WFSIaEU6Oq— Tesla (@Tesla) June 28, 2025 Moreover, the timing is advantageous, as Musk has been attempting to shift investor focus towards the rollout of his robotaxi nology and away from its struggling core of selling EVs
This coming week, Tesla is expected to publish second-quarter global duction and dery figures that show a 14% decline in deries to 383,000 vehicles, according to the median estimate polled by the company’s investor relations team
While a few skeptics are bound to remain mistrustful no matter what, the suspicion is rooted in part in experience
Doctored ‘Paint It Black’ one reason why suspicion lingers Nearly nine years ago, Tesla posted a similar demonstration when it released the “Paint It Black”
It claimed that a vehicle was driving entirely on its own and the human behind the wheel was not even there to monitor for safety. “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons,” it stated in the posted in October 2016. “He is not doing anything
The car is driving itself
Literally chose a random customer who ordered a Model Y in the Austin area
Vehicle is exactly the same as every Model Y duced in the Tesla factory. — Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 28, 2025 Tesla’s AI director Ashok Elluswamy later testified in a sworn deposition the footage was not meant to be an accurate representation of the nology
Both the and the blog post have since been expunged entirely from Tesla’s site, but thanks to YouTube and web s they are still viewable
There was another, more recent example, as well
In October 2024, Musk showcased totype robots interacting with human guests at an event without telling anyone they were tele-operated remotely by humans
Tesla didn’t respond to a request for from Fortune
But Elluswamy, who has risen the ranks at Tesla since working on the 2016, denied there was any trickery with the self-driving dery on Friday. “Literally chose a random customer who ordered a Model Y in the Austin area
Vehicle is exactly the same as every Model Y duced in the Tesla factory,” he replied to a question on X
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