The long-promised Tesla Robotaxi platform is finally becoming a reality, no longer a distant dream of the future, as it is already driving the streets of Austin, Texas. This is the first time a fully self-driving Tesla Model Y with the company logo of Robotaxi has been seen in a video driving itself on the road. The sighting is a major milestone preceding the official launch of Tesla’s Robotaxi ride-share service on June 22.
The video shared on X has gone viral. It was taken in Austin and depicts a Model Y driving through traffic, halting at pedestrians, and making smooth left turns when the vehicle does not have a driver behind the wheel. The back seat had only one occupant, who is assumed to be a Tesla employee. This test drive is a pilot program that Tesla has initiated in Austin, and the city is becoming the first testbed of the Robotaxi ride-share platform by the company.
This Model Y has the Tesla unsupervised FSD (Full Self-Driving) software, which is the new version of the previously tested FSD software, and it is fully autonomous with no safety driver sitting in the front seat.
Why Austin? A Regulatory Playground for Autonomy
There is a reason why Tesla has decided to launch its Robotaxi in the city of Austin. The state of Texas consists of one of the most lenient autonomous vehicle legislations in the U.S., as no special permits are required other than the standard registration and insurance that standard cars require. This lenient legal system provides Tesla with a greater ability to test the capabilities of its Full Self-Driving software without the same level of regulatory scrutiny encountered in other states, such as California or New York.
Robotaxi at night pic.twitter.com/bz6zur8ayK
— Adan Guajardo (@AdanGuajardo) June 11, 2025
Tesla has also been collaborating with police and first responders in Austin to train them in dealing with cases that involve its self-driving cars. This readiness is an indication that Tesla wants to introduce its Robotaxi fleet into the general environment in a responsible manner.
June 22 Launch and Beyond: A New Era for Ride-Sharing
In the past few months several Robotaxi prototypes were spotted in Austin for testing purposes but now recently, CEO Elon Musk has announced an official launch date of the Robotaxi ride-share platform on June 22 and the first delivery of a driverless vehicle, a Model Y, delivered to a customer without a human driver, on June 28. These proceedings will represent the start of the commercial introduction of driverless ride-hailing services by Tesla, which may shake the whole industry.
As per the initial plan, Tesla will introduce approximately ten Model Y Robotaxi vehicles in a geofenced area, as Waymo and Cruise have done in other cities initially. The vehicles will be equipped with human operators that can be contacted through in-car support systems that riders can call in case of assistance – a feature utilized by the rival autonomous fleets as well.
If we compare it to Waymo, which uses high-definition maps, lidar, and multilayered sensor suites, the Robotaxi program is fully vision-based AI in Tesla. The FSD version used in the Robotaxi fleet is developed on a different software branch than consumer FSD and is optimized to enable complete autonomy, unsupervised.
Tesla intends to integrate this “unsupervised FSD” software into the main fleet in the future via over-the-air updates, allowing more Teslas to join the Robotaxi network. The company is also likely to launch a significant new FSD update later this year, with four times as many parameters and memory usage that is super-efficient, as Musk claimed.
In summary, the driverless Model Y seen in Austin is not a tech demo, but it is a statement of just how confident Tesla is in its autonomous driving ability and an indication that the era of Robotaxis is well and truly here. As the official introductions are only weeks apart, Tesla will change the landscape of urban transportation, one autonomous trip at a time.
