The Tesla Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta software has been in the hands of the few lucky testers for about two and a half months after being released in October 2020.
Since then the team at Tesla has released an astonishing 9 new updates based on the feedback from the beta testers. Each version has seen an incremental improvement in the behaviours of the self-driving software, hopefully getting us closer to a wide release to more owners, including to us in Canada.
Even before then, FSD beta has reached a significant milestone by driving nearly 400 miles (643km) from San Francisco to Los Angeles with no human intervention*.
To put this drive into perspective, it is the equivalent of driving more than the entire length of Vancouver Island (496km). Or from Vancouver to Nelson (659km), or Calgary to Saskatoon (596km), or Toronto to Drummondville (655km).
The feat was accomplished with none other than everyone’s favourite Tesla Twitter tycoon Omar Qazi (@wholemarsblog) behind the wheel. If you’re wondering why we put an *, that is because the drive was performed in Qazi’s Long Range Model 3 that was not fully charged. That meant a stop at the Firebaugh Supercharger and Kettleman City Supercharger, which did require human intervention.
There was also one other instance where Qazi had to take over. As he notes on his blog, after entering LA there was a large piece of debris in the road that he needed to take over and navigate around. This occurred after crossing the border into LA, “so the achievement of zero interventions from San Francisco to LA still stands in my view.”
Check out the full video below.
