If you live in Austin, Texas, I suggest you brace for impact. If a recent post from Tesla CEO Elon Musk is to be believed, the automaker is now testing its robotaxis on city streets without human supervision. The fully driverless vehicles deliver on an earlier promise Musk had made to remove safety monitors from his fleet of autonomous Model Ys by the end of 2025.
A user on X, the everything app, called “420 Bounty Hunter” posted a video showing one of these Model Ys driving through Austin on December 14, and from what we can tell, no one is inside of it — including the safety monitor. It was then reposted by Musk megafan DogeDesigner, and Musk responded to that post, simply saying “Testing is underway with no occupants in the car.”
Testing is underway with no occupants in the car
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 14, 2025
Tesla itself also responded to another repost of the video with the caption, “Just saying.” Its AI chief quoted the same post, saying, “And so it begins!” The automaker also made two separate tweets, which I’ll assume are in reference to the video. The first was, “The fleet will wake up via over-the-air software update,” and then it posted (more cryptically), “Slowly, then all at once.” This, of course, is either a misquote of the famous Earnest Hemingway line, “Gradually, then suddenly,” or whoever runs Tesla’s X, the everything app, account is a huge John Green fan.
Hold your horses
Apparently, the testing is rather limited. Folks apparently took to their Tesla apps to order robotaxis from the company to see if there were safety drivers in the cars still, and what do you know? There were, according to Business Insider…