- A Tesla owner and influencer attempted to drive a nearly brand-new Model Y coast-to-coast using only the company’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) assistance system.
- Tesla CEO Elon Musk said back in 2016 that the automaker would do the trip without interventions to prove to the world that it’s possible.
- In the real world, the attempt ended with a crash just 60 miles after the starting point.
Back in 2016, Tesla CEO Elon Musk hoped that the company would deliver an autonomous driving system that’s capable of going from one coast of the United States to the other without driver intervention. That never happened, but it hasn’t stopped a pair of Tesla fans and influencers from trying to do the grueling trip in a nearly brand-new Model Y.
The attempt was headed by Justin Demaree, who goes by the name Bearded Tesla Guy on social media. Demaree was joined by a friend, and the duo set off from San Diego, California, activating Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) driver assistance system and hoping that they would get to the other side of the country without any intervention.
However, things went south rather quickly. About 60 miles into the trip, the car hit a metal ramp while driving at roughly 75 miles per hour, leading to some airtime and serious damage. FSD Supervised didn’t brake or swerve, and the impact made the two men inside jump from their seats.
The journey continued, but it was clear that things were bad. A quick inspection on a car lift revealed that one of the front sway bar brackets was sheared off and that some plastic bits were damaged.
Tesla FSD coast-to-coast attempt repair bill
Photo by: Bearded Tesla Guy / YouTube
They continued to drive, but the biggest issue popped up at the next charging stop, where the car refused to take any energy from the Supercharger and threw several errors, including one that said the front electric motor was no longer working.
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The duo limped their way to a Tesla Service Center in Tucson, Arizona, where they discovered that the high-voltage battery was toast. When the service techs were done with the estimate, the repair bill was in excess of $22,000.
However, here’s where things get interesting. The battery replacement alone was valued at approximately $17,000, but it ended up costing nothing for the owner because Tesla covered it under warranty. A deeper dive into the damaged battery’s error codes revealed that it had a cell imbalance well before the highway incident. According to one of the service technicians who worked on the damaged Model Y, the problem was already there, and the impact might have been enough to accelerate the original issue.
Credit where it’s due, Tesla did the right thing to replace the damaged battery. That said, attempting a coast-to-coast drive on the so-called Full Self-Driving system turned into a huge headache for the owner. For what it’s worth, Demaree claimed in the video description that he recently took a 1,000-mile trip from Florida to Indiana, where he experienced “a true non-stop charger to charger FSD trip without taking over.”
That’s exactly what an independent research firm found last year, after testing Tesla’s FSD on over 1,000 miles of city streets, rural two-lane highways, mountain roads and highways. A car with FSD activated can handle a scenario flawlessly dozens of times, only to unexpectedly make a mistake when the driver believes it can handle it.
“What’s most disconcerting and unpredictable is that you may watch FSD successfully negotiate a specific scenario many times–often on the same stretch of road or intersection–only to have it inexplicably fail the next time,” said Guy Mangiamele, Director of AMCI Testing.
Thankfully, nobody was hurt in Bearded Tesla Guy’s FSD-related incident. For all intents and purposes, Tesla’s driver assistance system is still considered a Level 2 affair on the Society of Automotive Engineers’ levels of driving automation chart. This means the driver must always pay attention to the road and take full responsibility if something goes wrong.
