Tesla finally came through on a big Elon Musk promise | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

Both fans and critics of Tesla (TSLA) boss Elon Musk can agree on one thing: the billionaire has always had a big vision for the future.

For years, Musk has promised that Teslas will be able to drive themselves, allowing their owners to not only enjoy the ride, but even use the car to make them money by using it for Uber-like services.

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He’s also promised that would be the case by Q2 of 2025 (so in other words, now), and that Model 3 and Model Y owners would be soon be able to use unsupervised Full Self Driving (FSD) in California and Texas.

As those who follow Tesla closely know, Musk did execute the Robotaxi launch in Austin in June within a limited area — but video also surfaced of one of its vehicles driving into oncoming traffic after missing a turn.

Tesla has many skeptics, and this footage only served to further incite them. Dan O’ Dowd, CEO of Green Hills Software and an X user who tracks Tesla FSD mistakes, called out that Robotaxis made 16 safety-critical and driving errors “in just four days,” TheStreet’s Tony Owusu reports.

Now a new report says a Tesla has achieved another Musk-promised goal, but one may wonder if that’s really the case, or if Musk simply painted the picture to suit his own purposes.

Elon Musk touted a recent milestone for Tesla’s self-driving software.

Image source&colon; Bloomberg/Getty Images

The Tesla that drove itself

In a video posted to the official Tesla YouTube channel in late June, a camera inside a Tesla captured a momentous event: the car driving itself from the factory to the new owner, who lives 30 minutes away.

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Another video, inset in the bottom corner, showed the car from various angles, including the empty back seat, to prove there were no humans in the car.

The video ended with applause as three black-clad Tesla employees accompanied the buyer out to his new car, saying, “Welcome to your New Tesla!”

Musk also tweeted about the accomplishment on June 27 before the video came out, saying, “There were no people in the car at all and no remote operators in control at any point. FULLY autonomous!”

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first fully autonomous drive with no people in the car or remotely operating the car on a public highway,” he continued.

The vehicle’s buyer, who goes by Jose on X, replied in the comments with photos, saying, “That was me! So excited to have been a part of this thank you! @elonmusk @Tesla.”

The race for fully autonomous freeway driving

While Musk claims that the delivery was the first-ever autonomous drive on a highway with no human help, that’s not quite the truth, as Alphabet’s (GOOGL) competitor Waymo has been hard at work on the feature for some time.

Waymo started testing its vehicles on highways in March. CBS reporter Chris Van Kleeve made a video of his own ride, which he took with Waymo Principal Software engineer Pierre Kreitmann.

When asked what the biggest challenge in freeway driving was, Kreitmann told Van Kleeve that part of it is the speed.

“The bar is to make as few mistakes as possible and be safer than a human driver would be,” he said.

Waymo’s goal is to launch the freeway driving this year.

“We’re gradually scaling our freeway operations with our safety framework at our foundation. We look forward to expanding this service,” Waymo says on its official website under the FAQs section.

Waymo already operates more than 150,000 driverless rides a week in specific states, like Arizona and California, and just expanded the service to Atlanta in June.