Woman gives birth to baby in Tesla on autopilot

Couple considered middle name ‘Tess’ as a tribute to the electric vehicle

A husband and wife have revealed that their second child was born in the front seat of a Tesla vehicle during rush-hour traffic.

Yiran Sherry, 33, was riding with her husband, Keating, 34, and three-year-old son Rafa when her waters broke on 9 September.

The couple, from Philadelphia, quickly turned around for the hospital 20-minutes away, but Ms Sherry’s contractions came on quicker than expected.

“She was squeezing my hand to the point where I thought she was going to shatter it,” Mr Sherry said in an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer on Wednesday.

He then put the Tesla in autopilot, allowing the car to drive autonomously. The feature works by using cameras and sensors to watch the road in real-time.

“I was [saying to] Yiran: OK, focus on your breathing. That was advice to myself, as well. My adrenaline was pumping. I said, ‘Rafa, everything’s fine. Your baby sister is arriving.’”

By the time the electric vehicle’s autopilot mode had them at the hospital doors, Ms Cherry had delivered her baby girl.

Ms Sherry’s umbilical cord was also cut in the Tesla’s front seat, the couple said, with hospital staff afterwards referring to the newborn as the “Tesla baby”.

The family were then escorted inside by medical staff.

“Once the pediatrician said, ‘She’s healthy. Congratulations,’ that was quite the sigh of relief,” Mr Sherry said.

While the couple did not name the baby “Tesla”, they said they did consider the middle name “Tess” as a tribute to the baby’s, birthplace, but opted against.

The baby girl was instead called Maeve.

It is not the first time a baby has been born inside a Tesla vehicle, with a New Jersey couple birthing a new child in January in the back of one of the electric vehicles, as People reported.