Tesla’s FSD Beta has been making headlines lately, and people on Twitter are suggesting that it should drive from LA to NY. Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to these suggestions with a simple tweet, saying “Soon.” With Tesla’s Autopilot making significant breakthroughs, could this challenging goal be achieved soon?
In my opinion, the Highway AP feature is already proven. Using Enhanced Autopilot (EAP) since 2018, and it’s almost flawless by now. So, driving from LA to NY is not a big deal. However, achieving fully autonomous driving without any driver intervention is a challenging and valuable goal that Tesla has been working hard to achieve.
Way back in October 2016, Musk told everyone Tesla was aiming to have fully self-driving cars go coast to coast without any human help by the end of 2017. Talk about ambitious! Luckily for Musk, “soon” means a lot more now since Tesla’s self-driving tech has come a long way, shouldn’t be too long before that vision’s a reality.
Looking back, that was one heck of a goal to set. Tesla has been working on a pure vision-based autonomous driving solution, which only uses cameras without the need for radar. Tesla has already started producing Model 3 and Model Y models without radar and hopes to achieve Autopilot and FSD functions only with cameras. Elon Musk has referred to radar as the “crutch” of autonomous driving and has always planned to use a camera-based solution.
While Tesla is announcing that the full driving system is coming soon, Mercedes has received permission to drive fully autonomously in California with a speed limit of 40 mph on highways. This shows that the race for autonomous driving is heating up, and Tesla is not the only player in the game.
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