While it might be a while before we see fully autonomous cars become mainstream, Tesla’s efforts are certainly evidence that we are progressing rather nicely. This is thanks to Whole Mars Catalog who recently shared a video on YouTube where they put Tesla’s Full Self-Driving beta feature to the test somewhat successfully.
In the test, they used a Model 3 equipped with the FSD beta feature and successfully drove from San Francisco to Los Angeles. It would have been a perfect run without any human intervention, but it seems that when crossing into LA, a human driver had to take over in order to avoid debris on the road, but other than that, it was pretty much near-perfect.
That being said, it should be noted that Whole Mars Catalog only intervened because they felt that the car might not have been able to navigate the debris by itself. It is possible that it could have, but it seems rather dangerous to find out on public roads. There were also instances of erratic behavior around San Francisco’s Market Street, but this just serves to highlight that there is still quite a bit of work needed to be done before officials can fully sign off on the feature.
Tesla isn’t the only company looking to introduce fully autonomous features to its vehicles, but like we said, there is still quite a bit of testing that needs to be done and cars put through various scenarios, but if anything, this test run does give us a glimmer of hope.