Watch Contestants Try to Win a Tesla Model Y and Roadster on 'The Price Is Right'

Contestant wins Tesla Model Y on The Price is Right

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In January 18th, 2023’s “Geniuses” episode of The Price is Right, they unveiled a Tesla Model Y and a 220v connector as a showcase prize, alongside a virtual game room.

In order for a contestant to win the showcase prize on The Price is Right, they must bid as close to the actual retail price as possible without going over. If their bid is closer to the retail price than the other contestant’s bid, they win.

The contestant, named David, put in a bid of $77,000 for the Model Y and gaming chairs. The price came in at $78,500, so David won!

The Model Y David won is a white Long Range model with 331 miles of range and Enhanced Autopilot, a $6,000 upgrade option.

How does 'The Price is Right' obtain their prizes?

Tesla spends no money on advertising or commercials. This is on purpose and has worked well in Tesla’s favor because they’ve ballooned to becoming one of the most sought-after, respectable, and valuable automotive companies in the world. Tesla’s products speak for themselves… literally.

According to Chris Johnson, a former IRS lawyer, on Quora, The Price is Right doesn’t purchase prizes. Instead, they’re all given to the show by various manufacturers to give away to the contestants. “At the end of the day, giving away these prizes is essentially glorified advertising,” Johnson writes on Quora. “Did you notice how each and every prize is described in intimate detail? The companies giving the prizes to the show hope that the millions of people watching [will] like what they see, and go out and buy the very same items themselves. If a company ends up selling just one of the same items that was featured on the show, they recoup most of what they gave away.”

The Price is Right has been giving away cars and high-expense products for many years. The most expensive prize was, according to CBS, an Audi R8 V8 Spyder Quattro S Tronic.

Not the first or second Tesla on 'The Price is Right'

This Tesla Model Y is the third Tesla that has appeared on the popular game show. On April 22nd, 2010, The Price is Right gave away a first-generation Tesla Roadster. Drew Carey, the show’s host, said that it was worth more than $112,000. Adjusted for inflation, that’s roughly $152,500 today, which is about the price of a spec’d out Plaid Model X.

Carey also mentioned that he has a friend that has a Tesla Roadster, and it drives like a slot car. “It’s fantastic!” he said with a smile.

At the time of that airing, Tesla had just started mass-producing the Roadster. It was based on the chassis for the Lotus Elise and was the first highway-legal serial production all-electric car to use lithium-ion battery cells, according to CleanTechnica.

In May 2019, a contestant won a black Tesla Model 3. Before unveiling the vehicle, Carey asked Gregory, the contestant, if he was going to share his winnings with his friend Michael. “We’re splitting everything,” Gregory responds. “Ah, man, I don’t know,” Carey answers with a laugh.

Watch the full “Geniuses” episode of The Price is Right on CBS.

You Can Now Track Tesla’s Robotaxi Deployment

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Thanks to Tesla Yoda on X, we have found out that Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet is registered on the Texas Department of Transportation’s public-facing Automated Vehicle Deployment website. This makes the fleet’s movements publicly viewable and trackable, and marks a first for Tesla.

This isn’t just any old FSD test - this is the first officially acknowledged, government-tracked, and sanctioned deployment of a Tesla Model Y operating as a ride-share vehicle. But that’s not all - Texas DOT’s tracker notes that the Tesla does not have a safety driver.

View on the Map

Visitors to the Texas DOT website can filter for “Tesla”, and see, currently, a single active vehicle operating in the Austin Metro area. According to the state’s official data, here’s what we know:

Company: Tesla

Description: Ride-share service

Status in Texas: Testing

Safety Driver: No

The final point is definitely the most significant here. While Tesla has been testing FSD with safety drivers for some time in Austin and LA for employee-only testing, this is the first time that a vehicle has been officially registered and deployed on public roads without a human behind the wheel for safety. 

The fact that there is no safety driver officially shifts the liability from the occupant of the driver’s seat to Tesla, for the first time in a public setting. That’s already pretty significant - we previously dove into how Tesla plans to insure its own vehicles, and potentially owner vehicles in the Robotaxi fleets. 

The status currently lists Tesla as “Testing,” confirming that the service isn’t available to the public, but this is expected to change in the coming weeks.

This testing phase is likely part of a short but crucial period that lets Tesla capture data on the safety levels of its current iteration of Unsupervised FSD without a driver supervising. Tesla already stated that they’d be avoiding difficult areas, so this testing can also expose additional areas Tesla may want to avoid, such as school zones or blind driveways.

Tesla will need to prove, both internally and externally, that FSD Unsupervised has the necessary performance to safely navigate the streets without any incidents.

Regulatory Milestone

For years, the concept of a Tesla Robotaxi has been a future promise. Now, it's a present-day reality, albeit in a testing capacity.

Having an official government body list a Tesla as an active, driverless vehicle shows that they’ve been able to clear regulatory hurdles, which Tesla has often pointed to as the issue. It demonstrates a level of confidence from both Tesla and Texas regulators in the system's capabilities.

While it's just a single vehicle for today, we’ll likely see this list slowly expand over time. Alongside being able to track Robotaxi incidents at the City of Austin’s website, we’ll be able to closely watch Tesla’s progress with its first Robotaxi deployments.

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Tesla FSD in Europe: June Update

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The road to bringing FSD to Europe has been a long and complex one and filled with regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles. Elon Musk, as well as other members of Tesla’s AI team, have previously voiced their grievances with the regulatory approval process on X.

However, it appears that there is finally some progress in getting things moving with recent changes to upcoming autonomy regulations, but the process still seems slow.

Waiting on the Dutch

Elon commented on X recently, stating that Tesla is waiting for approval from Dutch authorities and then the EU to start rolling out FSD in Europe. Tesla is focusing on acquiring approvals from the Dutch transportation authority, which will provide them with the platform they need to gain broader acceptance in Europe. Outside of the Netherlands, Tesla is also conducting testing in Norway, which provides a couple of avenues for them to obtain national-level approval.

The frustration has been ongoing, with multiple committee meetings bringing up autonomy regulation but always pulling back at the last second before approving anything. The last meeting on Regulation 157, which governs Automated Lane Keeping Systems, concluded with authorities from the UK and Spain requesting additional time to analyze the data before reaching a conclusion.

Tesla, as well as Elon, have motioned several times for owners to reach out to their elected representatives to move the process forward, as it seems that Tesla’s own efforts are being stymied. 

This can seem odd, especially since Tesla has previously demoed FSD working exceptionally smoothly on European roads - and just did it again in Rome when they shared the video below on X.

FSD Supervised testing in Rome, Italy

Pending regulatory approval pic.twitter.com/TXh3uQIfrx

— Tesla Europe & Middle East (@teslaeurope) June 12, 2025

DCAS Phase 3

While the approval process has been slow, Kees Roelandschap pointed out that there may be a different regulatory step that could allow FSD to gain a foothold in Europe.

According to Kees, the European Commission is now taking a new approach to approving ADAS systems under the new DCAS Phase 3 regulations. The Commission is now seeking data from systems currently operational in the United States that can perform System-Initiated Maneuvers and don’t require hands-on intervention for every request.

This is key because those are two of the core functionalities that make FSD so usable, and it also means that there may not be a need to wait years for proper regulations to be written from scratch. Now, the Commission will be looking at real-world data based on existing, deployed technology, which could speed up the process immensely.

What This Means

This new, data-driven regulatory approach could be the path for Tesla to reach its previous target of September for European FSD. While the cogs of bureaucracy are ever slow, sometimes all it takes is a little data to have them turn a bit faster in this case.

Alongside specific countries granting approval for limited field testing with employees, there is some light at the end of the tunnel for FSD in Europe, and hopes are that a release will occur by the end of 2025. With Europe now looking to North America for how FSD is performing, Tesla’s Robotaxi results could also play a role.

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