A silver Model Y quietly exited the factory at the Austin Gigafactory in Texas on Tuesday. The vehicle, which was empty in both the driver and passenger seats, passed through intersections and traffic lights by analyzing traffic conditions by itself. After entering the highway, the vehicle accelerated to 72 miles per hour and naturally drove in harmony with other vehicles. Generally, the speed limit on highways in the U.S. is 65 to 75 miles. When the vehicle arrived at an apartment complex after about 30 minutes of completely autonomous driving, Jose and Tesla engineers cheered together.
Tesla’s video clip released on its social network service X on Friday showed the first unmanned delivery of a new car in the automobile industry. Tesla celebrated a new milestone in the self-driving technology of electric vehicles. CEO Elon Musk stressed that it is the first in the industry to fully autonomously drive on a public highway without people intervening at all.
“The first Tesla to drive by itself from the end of the Tesla line to the customer’s house will be delivered on June 28,” Musk previously told X on Tuesday. The time for delivery of fully self-driving cars has been moved up by one day.
The self-delivery service is considered to be a step up from the Robo-Taxi service that Tesla launched in Austin on the 22nd. Both services are equipped with Tesla’s advanced Full Self-Driving (FSD), but unlike Robo-Taxi, which deploys safety monitors and remote operators, the delivery was completely unmanned.
The latest case can be interpreted as a signal that signals the commercialization of electric intelligent vehicle (EIV) technology that combines artificial intelligence with electric vehicles. “We no longer call it EV, but EIV,” said Pan Jian, co-chairman of CATL, Tesla’s major battery supplier, at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. “I stands for intelligent,” he said, predicting that artificial intelligence will be the main driver of electric vehicle growth.
To accelerate this innovation, CEO Musk is also actively lobbying the Donald Trump administration to ease regulations on self-driving cars. In April this year, the Trump administration announced safety deregulation measures to support U.S. automakers such as Tesla to develop autonomous vehicles with the aim of winning the innovation competition with China.
JENNIFER KIM
US ASIA JOURNAL
