Tesla Model 3 with Full Self-Driving Beta drives itself from San Francisco to Los Angeles

The day when fully autonomous cars will roam the roads is still quite far, but Tesla has been making great strides in developing and perfecting self-driving technology to bring the future closer. Even though it’s still in the beta phase, Full Self-Driving (FSD) is an impressively sophisticated system as evidenced in a new onboard video shot from a Model 3 Performance.

YouTube user Whole Mars Catalog put the FSD system to the test during a trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles. This 15-minute timelapse video shows how the car exhibited a human-like driving behavior and did all the heavy lifting on crowded multi-lane roads. That being said, the drive was not without issues as the man behind the wheel had to intervene at one point.

Shortly after arriving in LA, a sizeable piece of debris appeared on the road all of a sudden, and rather than waiting for FSD to react, the driver took matters into his own hands and swerved to avoid potentially damaging his Model 3. In addition, FSD behaved in an odd way when the car reached Market Street by changing lanes. Rather than turning the system off, the driver watched it carefully and was always ready to take control in case of a hazard.

During the journey, the M3P had to make two stops to recharge the battery, one in Firebaugh and the other in Kettleman Cityx. The car’s owner says he’ll try to redo the drive in the future and fully charging the battery pack beforehand to eliminate the need for a second stop to recharge. The fact that it had to stop only two times is already an impressive feat, as is the FSD’s near-perfect behavior during the whole trip.

As previously announced by Elon Musk, a subscription-based FSD will be launched early this year after the system was originally launched in beta form back in October. It has already been updated since then and can be had as a $10,000 option. Customers who bought a Tesla in the last days of 2020 will get it for three months without any charges as an incentive to boost sales numbers in the final hours of 2020.

Source: Whole Mars Catalog / YouTube