Tesla has shared a time-lapse video showing one of its vehicles in Full Self-driving mode traveling some 360 miles from San Francisco to LA seemingly without any human intervention.
The drive (below), which ordinarily takes up to seven hours, also included a stop at a Supercharger station to replenish the car’s battery.
To keep within the law, someone is sitting in the driver’s seat the entire way, hands-on-lap and ready to take over control of the car at a moment’s notice if required. Tesla’s setup includes the deployment of a driver-facing camera that checks the person in the driving seat is attentive and looking at the road ahead while the car is in motion.
The recent trip demonstrates Tesla’s confidence in FSD’s ability to handle long-distance, complex driving without human intervention, from pulling away to parking up.
But despite the progress, FSD remains controversial in some quarters and is not considered fully autonomous by regulatory standards. In California, for example, Tesla’s FSD is still classified as a Level 2 driver assistance system — where Level 5 is full automation — that requires driver supervision and readiness to intervene.
Tesla chief Elon Musk revealed last week that the automaker is currently training a a much-improved FSD model that could get a public release by the end of September if testing goes well.
The recent supervised drive down the West Coast comes nearly two months after Tesla debuted its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. In those vehicles, no one is sitting in the driver’s seat, though they’re using a version of FSD that’s not yet available to regular Tesla owners.
Tesla also launched a ride-hailing service in San Francisco at the end of July, though the absence of the required permits means it’s unable to call it a “robotaxi” service, and therefore someone needs to be in the driver’s seat during the FSD-powered ride.
