Tesla CEO Elon Musk and AI Director Ashok Elluswamy shared firsthand experiences with unmanned Robotaxi vehicles in Austin, Texas, highlighting rapid progress toward unsupervised autonomy. Musk described a ride with no safety monitor as featuring 'perfect driving,' while Elluswamy called the back-seat journey 'an amazing experience.' These tests signal Tesla's push to remove human oversight from its self-driving fleet.
On Christmas Eve 2025, Elon Musk and Tesla's Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, posted about their rides in Tesla Robotaxi vehicles operating without any occupants in the driver's seat. Musk, who sat in the passenger seat, recounted his Sunday drive around Austin: "A Tesla with no safety monitor in the car and me sitting in the passenger seat took me all around Austin on Sunday with perfect driving."
Elluswamy shared a two-minute video from the rear seat of an unmanned Tesla Model Y equipped with Hardware 4 (AI4) and the latest unsupervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) software. The footage captured the vehicle navigating Austin streets, making a right turn at an intersection, waiting at a traffic light, and handling pedestrians smoothly. "It's an amazing experience!" Elluswamy captioned the post. In the video, he noted the evolution: "If you remember, a few months ago we had safety monitors in passenger seats, but these Teslas are done now with no one in the car, no one's driving the car."
These demonstrations build on earlier sightings of unmanned Teslas on Austin roads, which Musk confirmed as part of ongoing tests: "Testing is underway with no occupants in the car." Tesla secured statewide approval in Texas to test FSD and launch Robotaxi services, enabling data collection over large areas.
Musk has repeatedly forecasted imminent unsupervised operations. At an xAI Hackathon earlier in December 2025, he stated: "Unsupervised is pretty much solved at this point. So there will be Tesla Robotaxis operating in Austin with no one in them. Not even anyone in the passenger seat in about three weeks." He echoed this timeline during the 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting and the Q3 2025 earnings call. The Robotaxi service launched earlier in 2025, and these executive tests underscore Tesla's confidence in achieving fully autonomous rides without human intervention.
