Autonomous Teslas in the Vegas Loop Signal What’s Ahead for Nashville’s Underground Transit Future

Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal

A Major Step Forward in Las Vegas

The Boring Company’s Vegas Loop is entering a new phase of operations. Reporting from the Las Vegas Review-Journal confirms that autonomous Tesla vehicles are now transporting riders through the Las Vegas Convention Center tunnels. The service is still in its early stages, limited to trips between the Central Hall and Encore, and every vehicle includes a safety driver for now. But in many rides, the “driver” is not steering at all — and passengers may not notice the difference.

Steve Hill, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, described the experience as intentionally seamless. The goal is for passengers to forget they are riding in an autonomous vehicle at all. The rollout follows months of closed testing and debuted publicly during the SEMA automotive show, which brought more than 160,000 people to the convention campus. That week was on pace to become one of the busiest in the Loop’s four-year history, offering a clear demonstration of how an underground system can move large crowds quickly and efficiently.

Vehicles operating autonomously are clearly marked as “Tesla Self-Driving Vehicles,” and safety drivers alert passengers as they board. For Tesla, the underlying technology is not new — the company has tested full-self-driving software on public roads for nearly a decade — but operating it in a closed tunnel system marks a new milestone for the Boring Company.

Controlled Tunnels Create Ideal Conditions for Autonomy

One of the reasons the Las Vegas deployment matters is the environment itself. Tunnels provide predictable lighting, weather, routing, and traffic patterns — a series of advantages that make them one of the safest possible locations for autonomous mobility. Without pedestrians, intersections, or complex street-level variables, the vehicles are able to perform with consistency and precision. Hill noted that what is happening inside the tunnels is not fundamentally different from what Teslas have been doing on open roads for years, but the controlled setting allows for even higher reliability.

The Next Big Leap: Removing the Driver

While safety drivers remain in place today, Las Vegas officials are already planning for the next milestone: removing the human driver entirely. Once vehicles operate with no one in the front seat, the Loop will become more efficient, increase operational capacity, and reduce wait times. Hill emphasized that “when you take the driver out, that’s when it becomes really notable,” and noted that similar fully autonomous operations are already occurring on public streets in Las Vegas through other companies.

This transition will not happen overnight, but the path is clear. Officials describe their approach as deliberate and professional, advancing only when each stage is demonstrably safe. As more segments of the Vegas Loop open — including future stations serving Westgate, Virgin Hotels, the Howard Hughes Center, and eventually Harry Reid International Airport — autonomy is expected to become the core operating mode of the system.

What Las Vegas Reveals About Nashville’s Future

The progress in Nevada has direct implications for Nashville. The Music City Loop is expected to use the same tunnel-based, electric-vehicle model, which means the lessons being learned today in Las Vegas provide a preview of what Nashville can expect tomorrow. The most important insight is that autonomy is no longer speculative. It is arriving, it is functional, and it is improving faster each month.

In Nashville, autonomy promises meaningful benefits. Vehicles operating themselves can run more frequently and more closely together, increasing the number of riders a tunnel can move in a short amount of time. Predictable tunnel environments make service more reliable and smoother than surface-street transit. Safety improves as automation removes many human-error factors. And as the system expands, automation ensures that growing ridership does not require proportionally growing staffing.

Another key benefit is that Tesla is developing higher-capacity vehicles specifically for Loop systems. These future models are designed to carry more passengers per trip than standard consumer cars, moving the network away from individually sized vehicles and toward a higher-throughput transit fleet. Larger cabin designs, streamlined loading areas, and autonomous platooning concepts all promise to increase the number of people the Loop can move per hour. These enhancements will help the Music City Loop scale more effectively, especially during major events such as concerts, sporting events, conventions, and tourism peaks.

A Glimpse of What’s Coming to Nashville

As Las Vegas prepares for an expanded, increasingly autonomous future, Nashville is watching a real-world example unfold. The Music City Loop will benefit from advancements pioneered in Nevada, and the timeline for autonomy is accelerating, not slowing. Each new milestone in Las Vegas brings the technology closer to everyday life — and closer to the moment Nashville’s own Loop system steps into an autonomous future.

The message from Las Vegas is clear: autonomy in tunnels works, it is improving rapidly, and it is coming to cities that choose to embrace the next generation of underground mobility. Nashville is well-positioned to join that group.