- Tesla's CEO said the company's cars will deliver themselves to customers.
- Starting next month, new Tesla EVs will somehow navigate autonomously to their customers.
July. That’s when new Teslas will allegedly drive themselves from the factory to customers.
At least, that’s the latest claim coming from the company’s outspoken CEO, Elon Musk, who went on his personal social media platform, X, to deliver the news from what feels like the future.
It’s a very cool scenario, and one that could take all the hassle out of the traditional vehicle purchase and delivery process. You order the car online, get a delivery date, and then the car comes to you. No greasy salesmen trying to bamboozle you with fake upgrades–you just get the car at your doorstep.
Now, it's just a question of whether this is real or not, or another promise to be unfulfilled.
“Next month, first self-delivery from factory to customer.” That’s what Elon Musk said yesterday as a closing sentence to the announcement that Tesla has been testing self-driving Model Ys without backup drivers on the public streets of Austin, Texas, for a few days. The message came as the American company is preparing to launch a commercial robotaxi service in Austin sometime next month.
Musk didn’t elaborate on how new Tesla EVs will make their way to customers. At the beginning of the year, the automaker posted two videos showing newly built cars driving unsupervised on a 1.2-mile route from the Fremont factory to their designated dock lanes.
However, the self-driving in those videos happens on the factory grounds, and not on public roads, where legislation is currently one of the biggest hurdles toward releasing driverless cars into the wild.
That said, Tesla could just offer a kind of factory delivery option for new vehicles and call it a day. The cars drive themselves to a designated point, and the customers pick them up and drive them back home.
That’s not exactly game-changing, but it would mean that, at least in theory, Musk’s statement would be correct—and it's still a pretty novel approach.
The dream of self-driving cars is still very much in the making. Tesla plans on deploying a minuscule fleet of driverless taxis in Austin next month, all of which will be monitored by teleoperators. The initial 10-12 cars will be joined by “thousands” more in the following months, according to Musk, who maintains that people will be able to buy a Tesla and send it out in the world on its own to make money for its owner.
That promise is already a few years old, and it hasn’t happened yet.
