Tesla Car Delivers Itself To New Owner In Texas

If you believed Elon Musk’s hype train, you’d think we finally live in Minority Report. Instead we got a potty-trained Model Y doing traffic school regression on Texas highways. Tesla might have the first car to drive itself to its new owner, but self driving cars have been a thing for quite a while. Welcome to the game, Elon.

Tesla Model Y “Fully Driverless Delivery” Isn’t What Musk Promised

Tesla claims it just completed its first “fully autonomous” delivery of a Model Y from its Texas factory to a customer’s home with no humans involved. CEO Elon Musk called it “Kapow” on X while pushing out a timelapse and a full 30-minute video June 28. Tesla’s head of AI even bragged the car hit 72 mph without backup.

Except no one can buy a Tesla that truly drives itself. FSD still requires a human ready to jump in, and their fledgling robotaxi in Austin is under human safety monitor supervision.

Tesla’s History of “Autonomy Theater”

It’s worth remembering Tesla’s now-notorious event last year, where the company unveiled what it called its “autonomous future.” The event featured robot servants supposedly working without human control and cars navigating sleek safety tracks hands-free. The media ate it up until it was revealed days later that many of the robots were being piloted remotely by humans offsite. The “autonomous” vehicles were also running pre-programmed routes on closed tracks, not actual public roads.

Turns out the future wasn’t quite ready, but the stage show sure was.

Autonomous Taxi Services Beat Tesla by Years

Let’s be clear: Tesla did not invent self-driving ride services. That honor goes to Waymo, evolving from Google’s Project Chauffeur in 2009, which debuted fully driverless public rides in 2015 and launched Waymo One in Phoenix and San Francisco between 2017 and 2020 with no steering wheels or safety drivers. As of mid-2025 Waymo runs in seven U.S. cities with hundreds of fully autonomous vehicles and over 250,000 paid weekly rides.

Other players include NuTonomy, which deployed robotaxis in Singapore in August 2016. Yandex started fully autonomous taxis in 2017. Uber’s Otto was running autonomous freight trucks by late 2016.

Musk Loves to Promise the Moon

Remember, Musk pledged “Tesla FSD by 2017.” Instead we got $12,000 beta testing still under human oversight eight years later. Tesla’s robotaxi prototype in Austin swerves into wrong lanes and breaks speed limits, with video evidence compiled by the media. Regulators are in suits.

The Real Autonomous Leaders Ahead of Tesla

Tesla’s hype-driven delay looks less cutting edge and more fashionably late to the robotaxi party.

The Bottom Line

Tesla’s Model Y “delivery” is a neat party trick that looks slick online. But this isn’t a breakthrough. Waymo, NuTonomy, Yandex, and freight-bot pioneers burned this path before Tesla could tweet about it. Musk still sells the dream of full autonomy. The reality? Sticker-price FSD, a safety-monitored taxi pilot, a short filmed joyride, and a robot servant reveal that turned out to be remote-controlled cosplay.

So congrats Tesla. You finally shipped a car to someone’s house that followed the speed limit. Sometimes. Next time leave the fireworks at home.