Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of Tesla Inc., marked his 54th birthday today by announcing the company’s first fully autonomous vehicle delivery.
The statement was shared on his social media platform, X. According to Musk, a Tesla Model Y SUV was delivered from Tesla’s manufacturing facility near Austin, Texas to a customer’s home without any human driver or remote assistance.
The route included city streets and highways, and the vehicle reached a maximum speed of 72 miles per hour, as confirmed by Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s Head of Artificial Intelligence and Autopilot.
The delivery was made on June 27, one day before the date Musk had earlier projected for the first autonomous handoff.
“This vehicle drove itself from the factory to the customer with no one inside,” Musk stated in a post.
He added that a video recording of the delivery would be released at a later time.
This development follows Tesla’s limited rollout of its robotaxi service on June 22, which provided test rides to selected individuals in a small area of Austin using a fleet of autonomous Model Y vehicles.
Tesla has not yet clarified whether autonomous delivery will be expanded or integrated into its standard operations.
Personal Background and Career
Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. His mother, Maye Musk, is a Canadian-born model and dietitian. His father, Errol Musk, is a South African engineer.
Musk moved to the United States in the 1990s and earned degrees in Physics and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
He briefly enrolled in a PhD program at Stanford University, but left to pursue business interests.
At age 12, Musk created and sold a video game called Blaster for $500. His first company, Zip2, was founded in 1995 and later sold to Compaq in 1999 for $307 million, earning Musk $22 million. He co-founded X.com, which became PayPal and was sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. Musk received approximately $180 million from the deal.
He founded SpaceX in 2002 and became an early investor in Tesla in 2004, later becoming CEO. Musk also founded Neuralink in 2016 and has been involved in other ventures such as The Boring Company and xAI.
Family Information
Elon Musk has 13 children from different relationships:
- Justine Wilson (married 2000–2008): Six children; one (Nevada) died in infancy. Twins Vivian and Griffin, and triplets Kai, Saxon, and Damian were born through IVF.
- Talulah Riley (married 2010–2016): No children.
- Amber Heard (relationship in 2016–2017): No children.
- Grimes (relationship 2018–2022): Three children — X Æ A-12, Exa Dark Sidereal, and Techno Mechanicus.
- Shivon Zilis (relationship from 2021 to present): Four children —Strider, Azure, Grahl, and one other child whose name has not been disclosed.
Musk has publicly expressed concerns about global population decline and advocates for having more children, particularly among individuals with high educational and professional backgrounds.
As of June 2025, Elon Musk is considered the wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth estimated at over $200 billion, largely due to his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.
