Elon Musk’s The Boring Company is finally testing Full Self-Driving (Supervised), the advanced driver assistance system created by Tesla, in the tunnels that connect Las Vegas’ Convention Center to a few nearby hotels, according to Fortune.
Steve Hill, the CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, told the outlet that The Boring Company has been doing tests of the software for a few months now in Tesla vehicles with only safety drivers onboard. But any widespread use of the tech is still “a ways off,” Hill said.
The Tesla tunnels have been open for around four years, and while The Boring Company has plans to expand them across Las Vegas, they currently serve a small area underneath and around the Convention Center.
Despite Tesla’s recent launch of a small-scale, invite-only robotaxi service in Austin, Texas (and a similarly small ride-hail service in San Francisco), and Musk’s boasting about how good the technology is, Hill said that safety drivers still have to “periodically” intervene and take control of the vehicles.
In theory, the simple tunnels should be an easy task for Tesla’s autonomy software to solve, with perhaps the greatest challenge being navigating passenger pick-up and drop-off at the various underground stations. Hill said the colorful lighting of The Boring Company’s tunnels, along with the semi-smooth rock walls, have been challenges that the driver assistance system has had to cope with as the cars “find spots that are difficult for them.”
