First Tesla Robotaxi Spotted Driving Around Austin

For a company that’s supposedly launching an autonomous taxi service in just two days, Tesla has been fairly quiet about it over the past few weeks. But now, what appears to be the first-ever Tesla Robotaxi has been spotted driving around Austin, along with a seeming confirmation from Tesla’s autonomy chief himself.

The X account “Terrapin Terpene Col” posted a video today that shows a new Tesla Model Y making a turn off Austin’s famed South Congress Avenue, complete with no human driver behind the wheel. The Model Y also has the graffiti-like “Robotaxi” branding on the door. The video was reposted by longtime Tesla-watcher, Sawyer Merritt. 

The video was then reposted by Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of autonomy and AI, with the commentary: “Slowly slowly at first, then…” as a seeming confirmation that the car is the real deal.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other company officials have indicated that the “unsupervised” Robotaxi service will launch in June. Last month, Bloomberg reported the target launch date would be June 12, although that has not been confirmed by the automaker. 

By “unsupervised,” Musk and other company officials have said that the Model Ys will not operate with a human driver in the seat, although they will be monitored remotely. “We’ll be watching what the cars are doing very carefully and as confidence grows, less of that will be needed,” Musk told CNBC in May.

The rollout of the Robotaxi service will, at least initially, be a far cry from the utopia-coded Robotaxi event Tesla put on last summer, where it unveiled a sleek, two-door ride-hailing car and a “Robovan” meant to move larger groups of people. It will use the current Model Y, for starters, and Musk has said it will launch with just “10 to 12 cars.” But then, in his typical fashion, the CEO promised things will get big: “My prediction is that probably by the end of next year, we’ll have hundreds of thousands, if not over a million Teslas doing self-driving in the U.S.,” he told CNBC.

Photo by: Tesla

Delivering a vision of fully self-driving cars has been perhaps Musk’s greatest promise. In the past, he’s said that “solving” autonomy is the difference between Tesla being a company potentially worth trillions of dollars and essentially worthless. At a time when his involvement in politics and subsequent public feud with President Donald Trump has made him loathed on both sides of the aisle, and as Tesla contends with sinking new car sales, the company badly needs a win.

But even as it’s made advancements and improvements to its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems over the years, Tesla has much to prove about its camera-and-AI-only approach to autonomy—especially when they’re going to be in traffic-heavy areas like South Congress.   

Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com