EVWire brief: The first-ever Tesla Robotaxi (Model Y) was spotted, with no one in the driver’s seat, testing on the public roads in Austin, Texas on June 10th, this time with a robotaxi logo and all. Elon says public rides will ‘tentatively’ launch on June 22nd.
We’ve put together all the breadcrumbs, Tesla team member comments, details from Elon, and everything else you need to get the full view of what’s been revealed (semi-leaked?) in Austin, Texas today.
First up, the video of the driverless Tesla Robotaxi itself:
UPDATE: we got a follow-up on the public launch date from Elon:
And here’s an update with short video of the robotaxi in Austin during the night.
Now, I believe what Phil wrote, sums the significance of this up best:
"It’s just a small step today. In hindsight, it will be the inflection point."
Seems that the team, including Elon, expected the video to surface sooner or later, as he also reshared it and then continued to give more details in several posts that I compiled for you here:
I’ve also gathered some more Tesla team member comments for you here:
Kalena Brown, Staff Technical Program Manager - Autopilot Software, writes: "Was wondering when this would hit social media 😜", seemingly hinting this was taken some time before posting:
If you look closely, you can see the chase car behind the robotaxi as well. Srihari writes:
"A tremendous amount of testing is underway to ensure a safe and slow rollout in the beginning."
Ashok Elluswamy, Vice President of Autopilot at Tesla, writes
"Slowly slowly at first, then ..."
which happens to be an iteration of one of my favorite concept in industry:
"gradually... then suddenly". You can see they are bracing for scale.
Eric, the Principal Engineer, Lead Engineer of Robotaxi at Tesla, just says "It's go time".
In case you want to dig deeper, I also revealed the exact intersection in my thread on X here. The green building you see in the video is Jo's Coffee – South Congress. If you drop in "101 W James St" you'll get to the intersection from the video:
Now, Tesla’s official X account plays along as well, and left a somewhat cryptic message to Farzad there:
Now’s the time to dust off that tinfoil hat and let us know what the ‘in a dream’ comment means here. Tesla has a history of leaving hidden-meaning breadcrumbs here and there.
More context: We recently wrote an article on what to expect from the Robotaxi launch, and we saw Elon confirmed on the Q1 earnings call Tesla will launch with 10 Model Ys for the first week and then reach 1,000 robotaxis within a few months.
We’re keeping a close eye on what Tesla does next and how fast it scales up the robotaxi service.
If you’re on X, do share my fairly viral thread with your friends that contains most of the information here. 🤝
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