Karmactive Team
In a significant milestone for autonomous driving technology, Tesla completed its first fully driverless delivery of a new car on June 27, 2025. A Model Y SUV transported itself from Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, directly to a customer’s apartment building approximately 30 minutes away, with no human driver or remote operator intervention.
Tesla released a 30-minute video capturing the journey, showed the vehicle navigating parking lots, city streets, and highways at speeds reaching 72 mph. Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced the achievement in a post on X, calling it “FULLY autonomous” and congratulating the company’s AI and chip design teams.
“There were no people in the car at all and no remote operators in control at any point,” Musk wrote on his social platform X. The delivery was completed a day ahead of Tesla’s previously announced schedule.
Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s Head of AI, in a reply to query on X said, “literally chose a random customer who ordered a Model Y in the Austin area” to participate in this historic delivery. He noted that the vehicle delivered is “exactly the same as every Model Y produced in the Tesla factory.”
The autonomous delivery follows Tesla’s launch of a limited robotaxi service in Austin on June 22, which currently involves 10-20 Model Y vehicles. Unlike the fully autonomous delivery car, these robotaxis operate with human safety monitors in the front passenger seat and are remotely supervised by employees from an operations center.
Industry observers have noted that Musk’s claim of this being the “first fully autonomous drive on a public highway” isn’t entirely accurate. Alphabet-owned Waymo has been offering employees fully autonomous rides on Phoenix freeways since 2024 and has expanded this service to Los Angeles and San Francisco.
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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is currently investigating Tesla over possible safety defects in their Full Self-Driving (FSD) systems. The agency recently sought more information from the company after some vehicles in its robotaxi pilot program were observed violating traffic rules.
While a Tesla owner’s manual states that drivers must keep their hands on the wheel when using the company’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) option, the delivery vehicle operated without any human oversight. Tesla has not specified which version of its software and hardware was installed in the autonomous delivery vehicle or when similar technology might become commercially available to customers.
This achievement comes at a challenging time for Tesla, which has seen declining sales in key markets, particularly in Europe. The company faces increasing competition from other EV manufacturers, especially Chinese brands offering more affordable alternatives.
Tesla has been promising fully autonomous driving capabilities since 2016. In 2019, Musk predicted that Tesla would have one million robotaxis on the road by 2020, a forecast that helped the company raise $2 billion from investors but has yet to materialize on that scale.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed legislation in June requiring state permits for operating self-driving vehicles, though these regulations won’t take effect until September 1, 2025. The law signals that state officials want the driverless vehicle industry to proceed with caution.
As Tesla prepares to release its second-quarter vehicle production and delivery numbers on July 2, this autonomous delivery demonstrates the company’s continued push to establish itself as a leader in self-driving technology despite regulatory challenges and market pressures.
