It wasn’t that long ago when, if you saw a car driving down the road with no one behind the wheel, you could safely assume something was very wrong with the world. Maybe it was a Maximum Overdrive-type situations; maybe the driver had discovered the secret of invisibility. In 2025, though, if you see a car driving with no human driver, the answer is a bit more mundane: you’ve entered a part of the world where robotaxis can operate without a backup human driver.
Apparently, Austin, Texas is now one of those parts of the world. On Sunday, one X user uploaded footage of a Tesla vehicle driving around Austin with zero humans on board. “No one in the car. No safety driver,” @cb_doge commented. “Fully autonomous.” Indeed, what is most striking about this is how mundane it looks: unless you were paying careful attention, you might miss the fact that there’s literally no one behind the wheel.
As Business Insider‘s Lakshmi Varanasi reported, Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the company had begun testing autonomous vehicles in the city without a safety driver — hence, presumably, the lack of any passengers in this particular robotaxi. Ashok Elluswamy, who heads Tesla’s AI efforts, also confirmed that testing was underway.
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Including the eventual removal of steering wheelsTesla has been testing autonomous vehicles in Austin for several months now: Business Insider‘s Lloyd Lee previously described riding in one earlier this year, giving the experience generally positive marks but noting the need for human intervention at a few moments. As Electrek reported last month, Musk has also scaled back his ambitions for the number of robotaxis operational in Austin by year’s end, targeting 60 rather than the previous goal of 500.
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