Tesla hypes ‘unsupervised full self-driving’ launch in June: here’s what it will actually launch
Tesla has started hyping its upcoming ‘unsupervised full self-driving’ launch in Austin in June. Let’s cut through the hype.
Here’s what Tesla will actually launch.
CEO Elon Musk has been talking about Tesla launching self-driving programs in Texas and California in Q2 2025 since last year.
Lately, he has turned Tesla’s focus to a specific paid ride-hailing service using self-driving in Austin, Texas in June. Here’s what he said precisely during Tesla’s last earnings call in January:
So, we’re going to be launching unsupervised full self-driving as a paid service in Austin in June. So, I talked to the team. We feel confident in being able to do an initial launch of unsupervised, no one in the car, full self-driving in Austin in June. We already have Teslas operating autonomously unsupervised full self-driving at our factory in Fremont, and we’ll soon be doing that at our factory in Texas.
The “unsupervised self-driving” operation in Fremont that Musk is referring to is simply Tesla’s vehicles driving themselves to loading areas at low speeds and on private roads – it’s a world of difference compared to operating unsupervised on public roads.
Speaking of the word “unsupervised,” it’s an important term that comes from Tesla’s telling owners that its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) features require “supervision” at all times.
Therefore, going “unsupervised” is an critical step for Tesla and something that Musk promised would happen for all owners who bought its ‘FSD’ package every year for the last 6 years.
Now, Tesla is hyping the upcoming launch as “the future is autonomous and it starts in Austin, this June”:
With the launch coming within just a few months, there’s still a lot of confusion around what Tesla will actually launch in Austin.
What will Tesla actually launch in Austin
Based on all the information released to date, Tesla plans to have an internal vehicle fleet, consisting of its existing vehicle lineup, although some believe Tesla will also use its new Cybercab, offering a paid ride-hailing service (à la Uber) in a geo-fenced area around Austin.
This is a significant shift for Tesla, which has been promising that all its consumer vehicles built since 2016 have all the hardware necessary for unsupervised self-driving and that it would come through a future over-the-air software update.
Musk has claimed that Tesla would turn a switch and enable millions of robotaxis overnight.
At the same time, he has criticized Waymo’s strategy of deploying its system in mapped geo-fenced areas for being too difficult to scale.
However, Tesla’s upcoming launch in Austin is extremely similar to what Waymo has been operating for years, with the main difference being that Tesla only uses cameras while Waymo uses a full array of different sensors, including lidar.
Musk also said that the Austin service will be “unsupervised” with “no one in the car,” but those are not exactly the same.
While there might be no one in the cars, we reported that Tesla was looking to hire people to work in teleoperation to support its self-driving vehicles shortly after announcing its plan for unsupervised ride-hailing services in Texas and California last year.
This would suggest that Tesla will use teleoperation to at least “supervise” the fleet of vehicles to be deployed in Austin.
Electrek’s Take
It’s pretty funny that Tesla would claim “the future is autonomous and it starts in Austin, this June” after Elon claimed that autonomous driving was a “solved problem” 10 years ago.
Furthermore, Waymo has been operating in several cities for years the exact service that Tesla plans to launch in Austin, including in Austin itself, since earlier this year.
To be clear, I’m not saying that Tesla’s launch of this service is a bad thing; I’m just saying it is a massive pivot compared to what Tesla, and Elon in particular, have been claiming it would launch for years.
It feels like after being consistently wrong about when unsupervised self-driving is coming for the last 6 years, Elon needs a win, and this enables Tesla to claim that it delivered self-driving – even if it’s not the unsupervised self-driving in consumer vehicles that it has been promising owners for years.
It will help distract from the current mess that comes with the recent admission that the millions of HW3 vehicles on the road will not be capable of self-driving. I also think that HW4 vehicles are going to be next.
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In a joint statement, French and German economists have called on governments to adopt “a common approach” to decarbonize European trucking fleets – and they’re calling for a focus on fully electric trucks, not hydrogen.
France and Germany are the two largest economies in the EU, and they share similar challenges when it comes to freight decarbonization. The two countries also share a border, and the traffic between the two nations generates major cross-border flows that create common externalities between the two countries.
At the same time, the EU’s transport sector has struggled to reduce emissions at the same rate as other industries – and road freight in particular is a major contributor to harmful carbon emissions issue due to that industry’s heavy reliance on diesel-powered trucks.
And for once, it seems like rail isn’t a viable option:
While rail remains competitive mainly for heavy, homogeneous goods over long distances. Most freight in Europe is indeed transported over distances of less than 200 km and involves consignment weights of up to 30 tonnes (GCEE, 2024) In most such cases, transportation by rail instead of truck is not possible or not competitive. Moreover, taking into account the goods currently transported in intermodal transport units over distances of more than 300 km, the modal shift potential from road to rail would be only 6% in Germany and less than 2% in France.
That leaves trucks – and, while numerous government incentives currently exist to promote the parallel development of both hydrogen and battery electric vehicle infrastructures, the study is clear in picking a winner.
“Policies should focus on battery-electric trucks (BET) as these represent the most mature and market-ready technology for road freight transport,” reads the the FGCEE statement. “Hence, to ramp-up usage of BET public funding should be used to accelerate the roll-out of fast-charging networks along major corridors and in private depots.”
The appeal was signed by the co-chair of the advisory body on the German side is the chairwoman of the German Council of Economic Experts, Monika Schnitzer. Camille Landais co-chairs the French side. On the German side, the appeal was signed by four of the five experts; Nuremberg-based energy economist Veronika Grimm (who also sits on the National Hydrogen Council, which is committed to promoting H2 trucks and filling stations) did not sign.
You can read an English version of the CAE FGCEE joint statement here.
Electrek’s Take
MAN Trucks’ CEO famously said that it was “impossible” for hydrogen to compete with BEVs, and even committed to building 200 hydrogen-powered semi truck to prove out that hypothesis.
He’s not alone. MAN’s board member for research and development, Frederik Zohm, said that the company is the one saying hydrogen still has years to go. “(MAN) continues to research fuel cell technology based on battery electrics,” he said, in a statement quoted by Hydrogen Insight, before another board member added that, “we (MAN) expect that, in the future, we will be able to best serve the vast majority of our customers’ transport applications with battery-electric trucks.”
With companies like Volvo and Renault and now Mercedes racking up millions of miles on their respective battery electric semi truck fleets, it’s no longer even close. EV is the way.
SOURCE | IMAGES: CAE FGCEE; via Electrive.
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GE Vernova has produced over half the turbines needed for SunZia Wind, which will be the largest wind farm in the Western Hemisphere when it comes online in 2026.
GE Vernova has manufactured enough turbines at its Pensacola, Florida, factory to supply over 1.2 gigawatts (GW) of the turbines needed for the $5 billion, 2.4 GW SunZia Wind, a project milestone. The wind farm will be sited in Lincoln, Torrance, and San Miguel counties in New Mexico.
At a ribbon-cutting event for Pensacola’s new customer experience center, GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik noted that since 2023, the company has invested around $70 million in the Pensacola factory.
The Pensacola investments are part of the announcement GE Vernova made in January that it will invest nearly $600 million in its US factories and facilities over the next two years to help meet the surging electricity demands globally. GE Vernova says it’s expecting its investments to create more than 1,500 new US jobs.
Vic Abate, CEO of GE Vernova Wind, said, “Our dedicated employees in Pensacola are working to address increasing energy demands for the US. The workhorse turbines manufactured at this world-class factory are engineered for reliability and scalability, ensuring our customers can meet growing energy demand.”
SunZia Wind and Transmission will create US history’s largest clean energy infrastructure project.
Read more: The largest clean energy project in US history closes $11B, starts full construction
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