On Saturday, Tesla announced that it had made the world's first fully driverless delivery of a car, achieving a key promise Elon Musk had made ahead of the rocky launch of his robotaxi service.

In a promotional video shared by the automaker, a Model Y rolls out of Tesla's Gigafactory in Austin, Texas. With no one inside, the gleaming EV drives itself across highways and city streets until finally reaching its new owner's apartment, making automotive history in the process. 

All's well — except for what seems to be one major, embarrassing oversight: where this genius feat of engineering decided to park. We draw your attention to the brightly red-colored curb that the Tesla stopped at, which reads in conspicuous white text: "NO PARKING FIRE LANE." 

It's theoretically possible that Tesla somehow received special permission to park the vehicle there. But if it didn't, it's another glaring example of the automaker's autonomous cars flaunting traffic laws.

"As usual, Elon Musk's latest PR stunt prioritizes showmanship over public safety," Dan O'Dowd, CEO and founder of the watchdog group the Dawn Project, wrote on X. "Is the fine for blocking a fire lane included in the purchase price of a new Tesla?"

Tesla's self-driving software has been the subject of intense public and regulatory scrutiny, which has ramped up following the launch of its robotaxi service in Austin earlier this month. Up until that point, the automaker had never demonstrated it was capable of deploying a fully autonomous driving system. Its popular Full Self-Driving (Supervised) feature still requires the driver to remain alert and ready to take over at a moment's notice.

Predictably, major cracks began to show once the ten to 20 robotaxis in Tesla's fleet began offering rides to its exclusively Tesla-fanboy clientele, who eagerly documented their driving experiences. Thanks to them, we have footage of the robotaxis committing errors including randomly slamming the brakes, nearly rear-ending a UPS truck, and dropping off passengers in the middle of a busy intersection.

Notably, a few of the videos appear to show Tesla's robotaxis violating traffic laws. In one instance, a robotaxi blazes through a 15 mile per hour zone at 27 miles per hour. In another, a robotaxi wildly starts turning the steering wheel side-to-side before clearly crossing the road's solid double yellow lines to barge into a left-turn lane. 

These incidents earned Tesla the attention of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is in talks with the automaker regarding the apparent traffic violations. No investigation has been launched yet, but these talks are sometimes the precursor to one. This latest stunt may add fuel to the fire.

Nonetheless, Musk is claiming victory. On X, he proclaimed the delivery was the "first fully autonomous drive with no people in the car or remotely operating the car on a public highway."

This isn't true. As CNBC notes, robotaxi leader Waymo has been testing its fully autonomous cars on highways in Phoenix, Arizona, since 2024, though it's currently only offering rides in this capacity to employees. 

In any case, we're pretty much just taking Tesla at its word, which is a precarious thing. It admitted to staging a popular promotional video from 2016 that purported to show one of its fully driving itself with someone behind the wheel; it turned out that engineers had pre-mapped the route taken in the video and that the car had crashed at least once during the shoot.

More on Tesla: While Tesla's Robotaxi Program Crumbles, Its Sales Are Falling Apart


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