Tesla has just released a fun video showing off a Model Y’s self-driving smarts.
The two-minute footage (top) shows a Model Y being completed on the production line before the vehicle drives itself out of the Giga Berlin factory in Germany, stops at a Supercharger, and then continues on to a parking lot. As you can see from the video, there are plenty of turns involved before the car finishes the ride with a spot of precision parking.
The Model Y, which like Tesla’s other vehicles comes with Full Self-Driving (FSD) assist technology, has actually been autonomously driving itself away from the production line to the outside lot since at least the early part of this year.
Last month, the automaker also announced that at Giga Berlin, 100% of its finished Model Y vehicles are now heading to the exterior lot without the help of a human driver. Vehicles at Tesla’s Fremont factory in California and its Giga Texas site are also driving themselves to the parking lot after rolling off the production line.
The autonomous operation increases efficiency by eliminating the need for human drivers to move the vehicles around the factory premises. It’s also a great way to test the car’s FSD system right off the production line.
Earlier this year, Tesla achieved a world first when it used FSD to autonomously deliver a Model Y from the automaker’s Giga Texas lot to the customer’s home, a journey that took about 30 minutes. Tesla shared a video of the entire journey in which it navigated highways, city streets, traffic lights, roundabouts, pedestrians, and parking lots without any human intervention.
Autonomous self-delivery could one day significantly streamline the way automakers deliver cars, enabling them to reduce costs and eliminate trips, whether it’s the customer going to the dealership to pick up their new car or staff heading back to base after completing the delivery.
It’s not clear if Tesla is still delivering cars in this way, though it’s certainly something we can see happening on a regular basis at some point down the line.
But it should also be noted that Tesla’s FSD system remains very much in regulators’ sights, as the automaker faces ongoing scrutiny over safety challenges that include driver overreliance, difficulty handling hazards like sun glare, and a number of crashes and fatalities.
