Tesla’s long-promised autonomous future is starting to look a lot more real — and it’s now chauffeuring Elon Musk himself around Austin.
In a post on X, Musk said a Tesla running “unsupervised” Full Self-Driving (FSD) recently drove him across Austin with no driver or safety monitor in the vehicle, while he sat in the passenger seat. According to Musk, the ride featured “perfect driving,” a bold endorsement as Tesla continues quietly expanding real-world testing of its Robotaxi fleet in Texas.
Tesla’s AI chief Ashok Elluswamy backed up those claims shortly after, sharing footage of his own ride in Austin. In Elluswamy’s case, he was seated in the back while the car operated entirely on its own, with no one in the driver or front passenger seats. “It’s an amazing experience!” he wrote, underscoring the confidence Tesla leadership appears to have in the system’s current capabilities.
These remarks come as Tesla ramps up unsupervised Full Self-Driving testing on public roads in Austin, an effort that began earlier this month and has since produced multiple videos showing completely unmanned vehicles navigating city streets. Tesla engineers have shared backseat footage of Robotaxis handling turns, traffic, and urban driving scenarios without human intervention or supervision, fueling speculation that fully autonomous public rides may not be far off.
The progress aligns closely with Elon Musk’s long-standing promise that Full Self-Driving would eventually turn every Tesla into a hands-free chauffeur. While today’s consumer version of FSD still requires supervision, Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet operates on more advanced internal builds that are further ahead in development.
Globally, FSD is now live in seven countries, with Tesla actively pushing for regulatory approvals in new markets like the UAE and Denmark. In Europe, the company has gone so far as to offer FSD ride-alongs to lawmakers and the public to demonstrate the technology firsthand. Meanwhile, the latest public release, FSD version 14.2.1, already lets drivers text behind the wheel when conditions permit — a notable signal of Tesla’s growing faith in the system.
Musk has previously said Tesla has “pretty much solved” unsupervised FSD, teasing that version 14.3, expected in the coming weeks, represents “the last big piece” of the puzzle. If internal Robotaxi testing continues to go smoothly, Austin could soon become the first real glimpse of Tesla’s autonomous ride-hailing future.
