After years of false promises and missed deadlines, several Tesla vehicles have been spotted over the weekend driving autonomously without safety monitors on public roads in Austin.
For months, Tesla's robotaxis in Austin and San Francisco have included safety monitors with access to a kill switch in case of emergency - a fallback that Waymo currently doesn't need for its commercial robotaxi service. The safety monitor sits in the passenger seat in Austin, and in the driver seat in San Francisco. Neither service is fully open to the public yet, relying instead on customer waitlists.
Musk has said that the human monitors are only there be …