Christian Pfister, a 68-year-old retiree, walks to his big Pyrenees, Wally, every morning on the street in his quiet neighborhood of old streets, lined with oak trees for single-family homes, dummy and apartments in southeast Austin, where he has lived in the last 26 years. It was about three weeks ago, on one of these morning walks, he noticed a white Tesla Y with Texas Plate Plate Drive, with a dark Tesla color, closely behind him.
He watched the tandem of Tesla holding a left turn on the street up in front of him, disappeared around the block for half a mile, then retired again – then, then twice, then again and again.
“That’s all they did – they go around the same block again and again and again, throughout the day,” Pffister says in an interview.
As a few weeks ago on Pfister to notice Pfister, a handful of white tesla (and some black and gray tesla) also visited the streets of the small neighborhood of Pfistter, driving on the same routes and taking the same turns repeatedly – usually with the front seat drivers, although two residents in the neighborhood who Fortune They interviewed that they had seen some vehicles without a driver with someone in the passenger seat. Another resident saw Teslas without anyone in them at all.
Tesla tests vehicles in the neighborhood as it is preparing for a long -awaited launch of its taxi service in Austin by the end of this month. EV, which has been working on autonomous technology for more than a decade, said it was finally ready to face Robotaxi competitors such as Alphabet, whose subsidiary Waymo has already offered 10 million paid rws and works in four cities and plans to start several more soon. Elon Musk has assured investors that Tesla’s Robotaxi service, which will initially start a little with 10 to 20 vehicles, will expand to several other cities before the end of the year. But all this will begin in Austin – and more special in this small neighborhood – since Tesla proves his concept and irons of all curves.
When Tesla’s robotaxis observations began a few weeks ago, they raised alarm among some of the people who lived in the neighborhood. Several residents went to the NextDoor Community Message Platform to ask their neighbors why the White Teslas – with the drivers – were parking in front of their houses for a long time. “It scares me,” a woman publishes.
24 -year -old Anastasia Maren, who moved to the neighborhood last month, said she had seen Teslas Drive from or parks in front of her duplex repeatedly since she moved, especially when she walks for walks.
“They look at you as if you are on their way, or you are the one who should not be here,” Maren tells the drivers. She says that while she has sometimes seen vehicles that move only with someone in the passenger seat – she often sees a person in the seat of the driver who controls vehicles. “Sometimes I can see the person actually turning the wheel,” she says.
Austin Robert Yates, 37-year-old resident, who lives in an apartment complex, north in the neighborhood than Maren and Pfister, says he sees that the White Teslas is arranged in front of his apartment, parked and with his dangerous lights, often in groups of about four. In some cases, Teslas were parked in the middle of the road with dangerous lights on, forcing other drivers to tour them. According to one resident, the tests occurred as early as 10:00 pm none of the residents Fortune He said, said they had received a notice or information from Tesla about testing in their neighborhood.
The residents of Austin are accustomed to seeing self -driving vehicles around the city. Waymo cars began mapping the city in 2023 with safety drivers and has since started offering passenger services around the city without vehicle safety drivers. Pfister said Fortune He has seen Weimos parked overnight in front of empty batches in the same neighborhood. A few years ago, Cruz launched a robotaxis on the streets of Austin, back before the Mother-Maika General Motors to stop all the vehicles, and later closed the driving service after an incident with a high San Francisco profile.
But Tesla’s observations add to questions that many industry observers have about the viability of company technology and approach to autonomous driving. While other autonomous vehicle companies are required for digital mapping of roads and neighborhoods before the start, Tesla claims that its camera only does not require high resolution mapping, radar or Lidar technology. According to the company, his approach to autonomous driving is more cheaper and more adaptive than competition: instead of mapping an area for months, Tesla cars can understand the terrain wherever they are. But if so, why is Teslas driving on the same streets of a neighborhood over and over again – and why many vehicles have someone to drive them?
“I thought they might just be in the driver’s seat, so if something went wrong, they could catch the steering wheel. But they actually drive the car,” says Pffistist, noting that he saw the drivers with his hands on the steering wheel. “They actually drive the car so it’s not without a driver. I don’t really understand.”
Tesla did not answer a request for comment.
Tesla has also tested at least two other places in Texas. There was planned testing with emergency vehicles on a separate isolated street in Austin, such as Fortune It is announced earlier. Tesla also tested in a training facility in Florence, Texas, with the Texas Catastrophe Recovery Team for Public Safety. During this event, government agencies create Tesla robotaxis scenarios so that the company can collect information on how to respond to various meetings with emergency staff and equipment, such as scenes of catastrophe or flashing lights and sirens, according to a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
But it is several blocks of the neighborhood in southeastern Austin, where Tesla conducts its regular tests in the real world during the weeks before the launch. There is a Supercharger Tesla station right across a busy street – the only station for about two miles – as well as a Tesla collision center less than two miles down the road. The neighborhood itself has quiet streets, although Teslas will have to go a busy road to get to the loading station. There are no sidewalks on the residential streets, so residents go around their dogs or push carts on the street itself – allow cars to work with obstacles in a controlled environment. The three residents say Fortune that the cars seem to work at a speed no greater than 25 miles per hour.
Tesla is approaching the end of the term of June, which Musk has launched for launch – just three weeks until the end of the month. A Bloomberg report suggested that the company was striving for a start on June 12th. But as of Tuesday, June 10, several important items for conducting a checklist seemed exceptional. Tesla had provided drafts, but no emergency guides were not finalized, nor did Emergency Transport and Austin Work Department have been conducted by Austin Fire Service, agencies told the agencies to Tuesday FortuneS AS Fortune He said earlier that the EV manufacturer told the city employees that these items would be furnished before the company started a service.
This story was originally presented on Fortune.com