About three weeks ago, Christian Pfister spotted a white Tesla Y with a Texas manufacturer plate drive by, with a dark-colored Tesla closely trailing behind it.
He watched as the Tesla tandem made a left turn, disappeared around the block, then drove by him again—once, then twice, then again and again.
“That’s all they did—around the same block over and over and over, all day long,” Pfister
told Fortune.
A handful of Teslas have since frequented the streets of Pfister’s neighborhood in Austin, driving the same routes and taking the same turns repeatedly—often but not always with drivers in the front seat.
Tesla is testing the vehicles in the neighborhood as it gears up for a long-anticipated launch of its self-driving taxi service in the Texas capital by the end of this month.
Austin residents are used to seeing self-driving vehicles around town. Alphabet-owned Waymo’s cars started mapping the city in 2023 with safety drivers on board, and has since begun offering passenger service around the city without safety drivers.
But the Tesla sightings add to the questions many have about the viability of the company’s technology and approach to autonomous driving.
While rivals have needed to digitally map roads and neighborhoods before launch, Tesla claims that its camera-only system doesn’t require high-definition mapping, radar, or lidar technology.
But if that’s the case, why are Teslas driving around the same streets of one neighborhood over and over—and why do many of the vehicles have someone driving them?
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
—Jessica Mathews 
