• Teslas now drive themselves over a mile from the end of the production line to loading docks.
  • The automaker released two videos showing the process as several cars make the journey.
  • The automaker claims this marks the next step toward unsupervised full self-driving tech.

Ever pressing on to the bleeding edge of technology, even if the previous cuts have yet to heal, Tesla is back at it again. Now, it says that its cars drive themselves from the end of the production line to the loading docks. That’s a 1.2-mile trip without humans in the car at all. Here’s everything the automaker showed us and what it’s saying about the development.

In a pair of videos, Tesla showed off the new process and it’s not unimpressive. The cars appear to start at a Supercharger station where humans appear to pop into the car to begin the automated driving process. From there, the driver gets back out and presumably moves on to the next car in the line to start its journey.

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One video begins by showing a wide shot that includes these workers along with at least six Teslas that are all moving and merging without humans behind the wheel. As the video continues, we see a line of these cars that stretches as far as the camera lens can see. Then, countless cars without humans in them line up and select various loading dock parking spaces.

This isn’t a super simple straight away these cars are taking from point A to point B either. They’re navigating several intersections within the grounds, other cars with drivers in them, and heavy equipment moving about. In addition, it appears that at least one section of the road is too narrow for two cars to pass at a time so the autonomous cars have to sometimes wait for another to pass before they can use that same bit of road.

Tesla claims in a posting on X that this is “One step closer to large-scale unsupervised FSD.” No doubt, this is impressive. BMW recently made news by using its own autonomous tech to enable cars to drive themselves down and out of the production line. Those cars aren’t navigating what these Teslas are though and they’re doing it through a completely different method.

All of this said, it’s very important to note that this is a closed environment that Tesla has complete control over. These cars aren’t out there on public roads with drivers who care more about shaving or doing their makeup than being alert behind the wheel.

They’re not dealing with the unknowns of public roads so this new process, while impressive, isn’t the same thing as true self-driving the way we all think about it.