Tesla’s Model Y Becomes First ‘Driverless Delivery’ to Home
Imagine ordering a car online — and having it drive itself to your driveway. On June 28, 2025, Tesla brought that future to life when a Model Y made a fully autonomous journey from Gigafactory Texas to a customer’s home — no driver, no remote operator.
The Drive: From Factory to Front Door Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, confirmed the accomplishment on X (formerly Twitter), stating it happened a day ahead of schedule, and emphasized that the journey was executed entirely autonomously The video evidence showcases the Model Y handling highways, city streets, traffic signals, and parking lots — all at speeds up to 72 mph — all without human oversight.
technology and handwear used to make this possible- Tesla Vision (camera-only): The Model Y used eight cameras to perceive its surroundings — no lidar, radar, or ultrasonic sensors were involved, fully relying on Tesla’s vision-based Full Self-Driving (FSD) software.
- FSD Software Version: The delivery vehicle ran the same “Robotaxi” autonomy software before switching to the standard commercially available FSD code upon reaching the customer.
- Hardware 4 FSD Computer: Likely equipped with Tesla’s HW4 processor (Samsung 7 nm SoC, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB storage), offering 3–8× the compute power of the previous HW3 system.
- AI v13.2.9 Stack: The internal screenshot from the recipient revealed the car was running firmware version v13.2.9 — a build of FSD v13, the first iteration designed to support unsupervised driving.
- Highway & Urban Navigation: The car merged on/off highways at speeds up to 72 mph, handled traffic lights, unprotected left turns, roundabouts, and even right-on-red — all staff-free and unsupervised.
- Complex Maneuvers: FSD v13 brings improved abilities: U-turns, parking, honking for emergencies, audio detection (like sirens), and more refined traffic control responses — all visible during the cross-town trip.
- No Multi-Sensor Failover: By removing radar and ultrasound, Tesla leans fully on cameras plus AI, which critics say might lack robustness in poor weather or occlusion scenarios — even though Tesla downplays radar necessity.
- No Remote Supervision: Elon Musk emphasized that no humans were inside or remotely guiding the car — making this one of the first unsupervised highway deliveries with a customer vehicle.
What’s Next?- Scalability: Tesla will need to prove that this autonomous delivery model can handle repeated runs safely across diverse geographies.
- Regulatory Navigation: Approval from agencies like NHTSA will be a critical gateway to broader deployment.
- Competitive Pressure: As rivals like Waymo and Aurora expand their autonomous fleets, Tesla’s strategy of direct-to-door deliveries could become a differentiator.
Whether vehicles drive us to work or deliver themselves to our homes, Tesla is steering us into a new era — blurring the lines between innovation and inevitability.
Tesla’s Model Y Becomes First ‘Driverless Delivery’ to Home | by sharath chandra | Jul, 2025 | Medium |
