Tesla's Autopilot technology continues to be one of the largest differentiators
for the brand and will likely be for some time. In this video I'm going to take
you through what it's been like to live with Autopilot over the past six months,
some of the best features of Autopilot, some things we didn't like about the
technology, and ultimately, whether or not I recommend using Autopilot when driving
a Tesla. Let's dive in. Tesla's Autopilot is a combination of software and a
sensor suite comprised of a front-facing radar cameras around the entire car and
ultrasonic sensors that today, enable Tesla vehicles to drive themselves on
the highway, drive to your location in parking lots and enable many safety
features on Tesla cars including side collision avoidance, and Lane Departure
warnings to name a few. Originally when I got my Tesla Model 3, I
opted not to get Autopilot with my car. Back then Autopilot was an optional
feature and didn't come standard with the car. I didn't think Autopilot was
worth the amount Tesla was charging for it and I questioned whether or not I
could trust myself using the system. At the time there had been a few well-known
and well-publicized fatalities and other crashes when the Autopilot system was
engaged and all of these stories seemed to have a similar problem: drivers not
paying attention to what the Autopilot system was doing. One of the largest
misconceptions about Autopilot is that it's a system that once you enable it, it
allows the car to drive itself and as the driver, you no longer have to pay
attention. Even though this is clearly not the case when you first enable
Autopilot and look at the warnings that Tesla gives you about the system.
Autopilot, at the time of this recording, is a driver assistance feature. It does
not replace the driver. Tesla has enabled sensors in the steering wheel that
constantly check to see if you have both hands on the wheel and are applying
a small amount of tension to the wheel. If you don't, the system will give you
various warnings to put your hands on the wheel and eventually it'll turn on
the hazards, lock you out of Autopilot for the rest of the drive
and bring the car to a complete stop. Now even if you know the limitations of
Autopilot and what it does, as a driver, the temptation is still there to not pay
as much attention when Autopilot is driving, and this is something that I
wrestled with when I was considering whether or not to finally get Autopilot
on my Tesla Model 3, and what drove me to finally get it on the car was actually a
two-week trial of Autopilot. In this two-week trial, I found that because I
tend to be the type of person that likes to be in control at all times, in all
situations, I am not the type of person to get comfortable with the car driving
itself and not pay attention to what it's doing. So that's what eventually
swayed me over to actually getting Autopilot, plus the fact that the price for
Autopilot dropped temporarily while Tesla was adjusting their pricing models,
contributed to me deciding to go for Autopilot. The self driving package
includes capabilities like smart summon, and Navigate on Autopilot as well as
locks you into any new updates from Tesla for Autopilot including the full
self-driving mode, which will allow Autopilot to drive your car from point A
to point B without any inputs from the driver though as the driver, you still
have to pay attention to everything the car is doing. So what has life been like
with Autopilot? Well, it's certainly changed for the
better. Tesla's Autopilot software is one of those rare pieces of tech that has
the ability to completely change your life overnight. Let's start by talking
about where Autopilot really shines and that is highway driving. Autopilot has
two basic functions: auto steer and traffic aware cruise control. auto steer
makes sure that you stay in between the lines on a highway and traffic aware
cruise control keeps your car at a consistent speed and at a consistent
distance between you and the car in front of you, and those two systems
combined are what make Autopilot work incredibly well for highway driving. The
follow distance and speed are easy to control using the scroll wheels on the Tesla
steering wheel. To engage Autopilot, you simply double tap the right stock down
to engage. You'll hear a chime and see a blue steering wheel and blue lines on
the car's display to confirm that Autopilot has been engaged. If you only
tap the stock once, it will engage cruise control, but not full Autopilot. When
traffic aware cruise control is on you'll see a blue ring around the cruise
control speed limit on the car's screen. To disengage Autopilot, you can put
enough tension on the steering wheel to where it'll disengage the Autopilot. You
can also tap the brake and it will disengage, or just tap the right stock up
and Autopilot will disengage. If the speed limit changes on the road
you're on, just tap the speed limit sign on your Tesla and the speed will adjust
or you can just let it do it automatically. Changing lanes while using
Autopilot is a breeze. You just tap the turn signal stock either up or down,
depending on if you want to move the car into the right or left lane. Autopilot
will check the lane that you want to move into to make sure it's clear and if
it is, it'll go ahead and move the car into the lane. The Autopilot
visualization during this process will actually show you the place in the next
lane where it is going to move the car. Autopilot will also learn how you like
to drive, so I for example typically go anywhere from four to five miles over
the speed limit on most given roads and Autopilot learns that so the next time I
get on the highway that has a 65 miles per hour speed limit and I engage
Autopilot, you'll notice that it'll automatically set my speed to 70 miles
per hour. The Autopilot visualization on the cars display is quite useful even
when you're not using Autopilot. The visualization confirms everything that
Autopilot sees, reinforcing your trust in the system that it will behave as
expected based on what it sees. The autopilot visualization is where you'll
notice the most improvements as time goes on with the software. Autopilot in
general actually gets quite a few software updates throughout the year.
Within the past six months, we've seen Autopilot get updates like increasing
the number of cars it's able to recognize on the road, it'll show you cars in
your blind spot, Autopilot will also now mimic what most drivers do when passing
a large truck and move to the outside of the lane. There is just a lot to love
when driving Autopilot on the highway. On long trips it's wonderful, makes the
drive less taxing, and allows you to focus on what the other drivers are
doing around you while it keeps your car centered in your lane. Another situation
you're likely to run into on the highway is traffic. Traffic is the number one use
case at least in my opinion for Tesla Autopilot because it just makes such a
drastic difference in the driving experience. For this scenario you don't
have to worry about the boring job of constantly switching your foot between
the brake and the accelerator pedal, I've noticed my blood pressure dropped quite
a bit when hitting traffic with Autopilot on vs. when I'm driving
manually. Now in the past six months that I've been using Tesla's Autopilot have I
run into any issues with it? Thankfully no, there have been no major issues that
I've run into using Tesla Autopilot. Now there have been maybe three or four
minor occasions where the software was doing something unexpected or it asked
me to take back control of the car but I've never felt unsafe using the system.
I'm always constantly monitoring what it's doing and feel like I still have
total control over the vehicle. Safety is something and I think a lot of people
actually overlook with Teslas. Teslas are some of the safest cars you can buy
today and that's thanks in part to Tesla Autopilot or well, specifically thanks in
part to Tesla's Autopilot safety features, which come standard on every
Tesla sold. These include automatic emergency braking, front collision
warning, side collision warning, obstacle aware acceleration, blind spot monitoring,
lane departure avoidance, and emergency lane departure avoidance. These safety
features are there for when you need them and I've already experienced a
couple of them. I've experienced my Tesla Model 3 moving to the other side of the
lane as a truck suddenly swerves into my lane.
Also I've gotten to test out the blind spot monitoring feature as well as the lane
departure avoidance feature and both of those features work very well. Now are
there areas that Tesla can improve Autopilot? Yes, there are actually two
areas that I found where they can improve the software based on the way
the software is designed to work at the time of this recording. The first area is
I think with Navigate on Autopilot sometimes the car just takes an exit and
make some maneuvers that just feel unnatural and don't feel like a maneuver
and actual driver would make and they don't feel like...the smoothest, so
hopefully Tesla is able to smooth some of that out and then the second one I'd
like to see is an optional chime for the blind spot monitoring feature. Other than
those two, I couldn't think of anything else that Tesla could improve for
Autopilot based on the way the software is designed to work at the time of this
recording. The great thing about Autopilot is that it's constantly
improving, each car is sending data to Tesla's neural net to help train the
entire fleet. In the months and years to come we can expect the Autopilot will be
able to drive the car in almost any situation and then one day, will even
drive the car without a driver. Based on my experience with Autopilot over the
past six months, that's a future I look forward to. Well that's it for our
Autopilot six months later review. If you're in the market for a Tesla,
definitely make sure you use a referral code when you order your car. Referral
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You can use our referral code in the description below, your friends' neighbors'
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the channel if you'd like to see more Tesla videos like this one. For 6
Months Later, I'm Josh Teder, thanks for watching.