Tesla Fans Try Coast-to-Coast Self-Driving Trip, Crash Almost Immediately

Two Tesla influencers have been driving in a model new Model Y “Juniper,” a refreshed model of the automaker’s most standard car. Sitting in the motive force’s seat was the content creator “Bearded Tesla Guy,” who’d just begun a coast-to-coast street journey with his good friend to put the vehicle’s “Full Self-Driving” tech to a continent-spanning check.

They barely made it 60 miles.

In a video shared by Bearded Tesla and noticed by Electrek, a small impediment is clearly seen on the stretch of freeway forward. At first, the passenger remarks it “looks like roadkill.” But as they velocity toward the thing, it turns into apparent that it’s one thing human-made and sturdy.

The Full Self-Driving software program doesn’t appear to take discover, though. The Tesla barrels over the thing and bounces from the street dramatically. After appreciable airtime, it makes a exhausting touchdown, and the motive force finally intervenes by forcing the car to pull over.

They hadn’t even left California, and the car had already crashed.

“This is not how I anticipated it starting,” Bearded Tesla can heard saying in the video.

The object, it turned out, was some sort of metallic girder that possible fell off the back of a truck. No one was damage, but the vehicle took a beating. According to Electrek, the road-tripping pair confirmed in a follow-up video that the Model Y had a damaged sway bar bracket and broken suspension.

It’s yet another incident that ought to raise severe questions about the capabilities of Tesla’s self-driving software program, which CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly insisted is succesful of driving by itself. Making this crash significantly ironic, Musk practically a decade in the past said that by 2018, Teslas would give you the chance to drive themselves across the whole nation — without even a driver inside supervising it.

Despite its identify implying in any other case, the driving mode still requires fixed human supervision and isn’t thought of to be autonomous. The California DMV sued Tesla for this spurious naming scheme a few years back, accusing the automaker of false promoting. Officially, Tesla has up to date FSD’s identify to “Full Self-Driving (Supervised),” but it’s a ludicrous oxymoron and a identify that’s not often spoken in full anyway, permitting it to get away with the impression that its automobiles are as succesful as human drivers even when the wonderful print clearly states in any other case.

Tesla automobiles operating Full Self-Driving or its no-less-misleading cousin Autopilot have been concerned in lots of of accidents, some of them lethal, and this one in specific brings to thoughts Musk’s cussed refusal to use lidar sensors — which he once called a “crutch” — to help his automobiles see. Instead, he’s embraced a “vision only” strategy that depends solely on the car’s cameras to detect its environment, one thing critics say could possibly be the automaker’s undoing.

Yes, the motive force ought to’ve intervened right here. But the tech also ought to’ve realized a fairly large impediment on the street forward. It made no attempt to drive around the thing or even apply the brakes. Maybe if it had other sensors that don’t get blinded by daylight, it could’ve.

“I’m speechless on what just happened,” the cameraman said. “Absolutely speechless.”

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