Image: Tesla
Tesla’s Robotaxi service in Austin just crossed a major line — and new footage is now showing exactly how the system behaves when a passenger tries to intervene.
As of today, Tesla has officially begun offering fully unsupervised Robotaxi rides to the general public in Austin, Texas. These vehicles operate with no safety monitors inside and rely solely on cameras, with no LiDAR or radar, marking a historic milestone not just for Tesla, but for autonomous driving as a whole.
One of the first publicly documented unsupervised Robotaxi rides was shared by @Tsla99T, a former Tesla AI engineer, offering a rare look at how Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Unsupervised system responds when a rider attempts to take control. In the video, tugging on the steering wheel immediately triggers an on-screen warning telling occupants, “Do not touch the steering wheel.” Importantly, the wheel itself does not provide any control over the vehicle. If the tugging continues, the system appears to initiate a safe pull-over maneuver.
This behavior underscores a critical distinction between Tesla’s consumer-facing Full Self-Driving and its Robotaxi deployment. In Robotaxi mode, the vehicle is clearly in charge at all times, and human passengers are treated as riders — not fallback drivers. The steering wheel is essentially vestigial, present but intentionally disabled as a control interface, before Tesla’s upcoming Cybercab does away with it entirely.
Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy confirmed the shift on X, noting that “Robotaxi rides without any safety monitors are now publicly available in Austin.”
Until now, Tesla’s Austin Robotaxi fleet — roughly 50 vehicles — had been operating without drivers but still included safety monitors seated in the passenger seat. This change fulfills a long-standing promise from Elon Musk to remove even that last layer of human oversight, making the service truly unsupervised. Tesla first began testing unsupervised Robotaxi operation last month, with initial rides limited to employees before opening up to the public.
Since the rollout, more footage has been surfacing online, including entire end-to-end rides where a completely empty Tesla pulls up to collect passengers. As these clips spread, they’re offering the clearest real-world demonstration yet of how Tesla’s autonomy stack behaves when there is no human backup.
What remains to be seen is when this unsupervised capability will make its way to privately owned Teslas. Musk has reiterated that current-generation AI4 hardware will be sufficient for fully autonomous driving, but for now, the most advanced builds of FSD remain exclusive to Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet, with improvements expected to trickle down over time.
