🐋 Tesla's Empty-Seat Robotaxi Tests Accelerate in Austin — December 2025 Unsupervised FSD Footage and the AI Capital Implications

Christmas Eve 2025, and the footage keeps coming.

Videos from Tesla engineers and observers show Model Y vehicles operating on Austin streets with no one in the front seats - safety monitors removed, systems handling everything solo. Some clips capture fully empty vehicles moving smoothly through traffic.

Phil Duan's mid-December video of a relaxed ride (cat included) went viral. Follow-ups confirm escalation: unoccupied tests, front-row-empty public validation.

This marks the shift many tracked for years.

FSD v14.2.2 - deployed via 2025.45.5 update - powers these runs.

Clips highlight confident lane changes, unprotected turns, pedestrian interactions, construction navigation.

No visible interventions in many sequences. Sun glare and edge cases still noted in reports, but overall smoothness impresses testers.

Austin fleet remains small - 30–60 modified Model Ys per independent trackers - focused on validation miles.

Bay Area operations continue supervised for now.

Regulatory approvals limit public unsupervised rides, but internal confidence clearly grows.

Elon Musk and team signal "unsupervised effectively solved" in controlled zones.

Previous versions demanded constant attention - alerts, interventions frequent.

v14 series reduces that dramatically in geofenced testing.

Pure vision approach scales via fleet data - millions of miles feeding neural improvements.

December escalation - removing monitors entirely - validates the compounding effect.

Critics point to remaining limitations: isolated disengagements, regulatory pacing.

Progress, however, accelerates visibly.

Waymo leads paid unsupervised miles across cities.

Zoox, Cruise restart programs.

Tesla differentiates through scale potential - existing fleet, vision-only, rapid iteration.

Austin tests position the company to challenge on generalizability.

Capital markets price the probability.

Tech infrastructure - compute, energy, chips - benefits regardless of winner.

When empty-seat footage spreads without incident, the narrative strengthens.

More on flows and valuation in part two.

But late 2025 delivers tangible milestones.

From supervised hesitation to unoccupied confidence - the gap narrows.

Current vehicle volumes contribute modestly to global production.

Yet pricing reflects Robotaxi network potential - multi-trillion estimates if scaled.

Humanoid robotics (Optimus) adds another layer, leveraging same neural foundations.

Institutional allocations grow exposure to the ecosystem: data centers, energy demand, semiconductor partnerships.

Austin fleet remains limited - dozens of vehicles, geofenced testing.

Regulatory timelines vary by state/federal.

Incident reports persist - glare handling, rare disengagements.

Waymo maintains lead in paid unsupervised miles.

Tesla's data advantage and fleet scale offer path to overtake on economics.

Markets discount probability, not certainty.

Smart money balances milestone progress with hurdles.

Record highs reward positioning on v14 unsupervised validation.

Broader AI enablers - compute, power generation - capture spillover flows.

Some hedge concentration risk with tangible assets during narrative peaks.

Gold performs across tech cycles when volatility rises.

Pattern, not prediction.

December 2025 footage - empty front seats, smooth urban runs - confirms iteration payoff.

FSD reaches point where internal unsupervised feels routine.

Public scaling pace will determine revenue inflection.

Capital flows aggressively on the vision.

Risk accompanies reward - regulatory, safety, competition.

Clear-eyed observers track accumulated miles, approved regions, fleet growth.

The autonomy wave builds momentum.

Position with awareness of both upside and gaps.

Signals strengthen - execution now defines the timeline.