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Your Tesla will become a humanless chauffeur, summoned via app
Your Tesla eases its way through the choked streets of Los Angeles and climbs the Sierra Nevada. It glitters with the lights of Las Vegas before continuing over to Yellowstone National Park, where the geysers blow and the buffalo stare from roadsides. Meandering through the Badlands and by Mount Rushmore, it pushes upward in elevation into the Rockies and then down to Denver. After the Tesla powers past the Midwest’s cornfields, it propels its way through Chicago’s multiple highway lanes, wedged between tractor trailers. In the final leg of the trip, the Tesla dips and zips through Pennsylvania’s rolling hills and maneuvers through the congested streets of Times Square, parking itself.
These Northern route stats: 3,241 miles in 54 hours, and your Tesla did all the driving for you. It was capable of seeing through heavy rain, fog, dust, and two cars ahead.
That’s the vision, or Tesla Vision, rather, of the not-so-distant future as announced by Tesla CEO Elon Musk during a press conference call on Wednesday, October 19. Outlining a future of self-driving cars, Musk set a goal for Tesla to make a fully autonomous road trip from Los Angeles to New York by the end of 2017. The trip would occur “without the need for a single touch” from the driver, including recharging the car’s battery. Owners would be able to Summon their vehicle, through a press of a button on an app, and the car would drive itself to wherever they are and pick them up – even if it’s across the country. The vehicle would charge on its own along the way without human intervention using something similar to the Snakebot that Tesla revealed last year.
“Our goal— I feel pretty good about this goal — we’ll be able to do a demonstration drive of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York. So basically from a home in LA to, let’s say. dropping you off in Times Square, in New York, having the car park itself by next year. Without the need for a single touch, including the charger.”, says Musk.
When you want your car to return, tap Summon on your phone. It will eventually find you even if you are on the other side of the country
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 20, 2016
This Level 5 “full self-driving or driverless capacity” will now be available on the 2,000 cars a week that Tesla is currently manufacturing. That means the Tesla Model S and Model X vehicles in production as well as the upcoming Model 3 will have what Musk terms “Hardware 2,” which allows for full self-driving capability at “a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver,” according to Musk. The hardware includes:
- 8 surround cameras which provide 360 degree visibility around the car at up to 250 meters of range;
- 12 updated ultrasonic sensors that allow detection of both hard and soft objects at nearly twice the distance of the prior system; and,
- a forward-facing radar with enhanced processing that provides additional data on a redundant wavelength.
The system, which has been more than a year in testing, will see continual software updates as the system learns through data collected from ‘Shadow Mode’ and self-driving algorithms are refined. Musk said that it would be some time before Tesla’s software would advance to meet capabilities of Hardware 2, so it will be disabled until it “reaches parity following full validation with Hardware 1, probably in December.” Updates are likely to occur every 2-3 months thereafter. Nonetheless, and in lieu of required regulatory approval, Musk claims that the safety level of this autonomous driving will be at least twice that of a human, or better.
Tesla’s current Autopilot system has been replaced with a newer generation ‘Enhanced Autopilot’ that will leverage the new suite of sensors to provide more precise lane keeping, lane changes without driver input, the ability to exit freeways, and an overall smoother and safer experience. Enhanced Autopilot and the Fully Self-Driving Capability, autonomous mode, is being made available through Tesla’s Model S and Model X Design Studio as optional upgrades.
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Tesla Full Self-Driving expands to another European country
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is heading to Czechia after the Czech Ministry of Transport recognised the Dutch RDW’s provisional type approval, making the country the seventh EU member state to clear the system for public roads. Tesla Europe announced on 21 September 2026 that “FSD Supervised is now approved in Czechia” and that rollout “will begin soon.”
The decision marks a notable reversal. Earlier in 2026, Prague had declined to automatically recognise the Netherlands’ April approval, citing concerns over speed-limit compliance, traffic-sign recognition and driver-attention monitoring, and arguing that a coordinated EU approach was preferable. Officials said months of expert review, talks with Tesla and other member states, and real-world data from countries already using the system resolved those issues.
🚨 Tesla FSD heading to Czechia 🇨🇿 pic.twitter.com/mkzlM9QjrB
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) September 21, 2026
“Safety remains the top priority,” the ministry stated.
FSD Supervised remains a Level 2 driver-assistance system: the driver must stay engaged and is legally responsible. Eligible vehicles need AI4, the company’s most up-to-date hardware version. Tesla is expected to push the feature over the air in the coming days, following the pattern seen after earlier national approvals.
Europe’s rollout began when Dutch regulator RDW issued a provisional EU type approval on 10 April 2026 after extensive testing. Mutual recognition then produced a rapid cascade: Lithuania (20 May), Estonia (29 May), Denmark (9 June), Belgium (10 June) and Slovenia (7 September). Czechia now completes that list of seven.
The approvals cover only a modest share of the EU population, but they add political weight ahead of a 6 October vote by the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles. A qualified majority, at least 15 of 27 member states representing 65 percent of the EU population, could open the remaining markets, including large ones such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain that have so far preferred to wait for a bloc-wide decision.
For Czech Tesla owners, the immediate prize is access to the same supervised highway and city driving already available in the other six countries. For Tesla, each new market generates additional European driving data and strengthens the case that FSD Supervised can operate safely under the continent’s varied road rules. The Czech approval is therefore both a local milestone and another incremental step toward a wider European launch.
News
Tesla Roadster event requires restricted airspace, and the FAA obliges
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has established a Temporary Flight Restriction over SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, rocket development and test facility, a move widely viewed as preparation for Tesla’s October 1 Roadster reveal. The restriction took effect September 18 and runs through October 2.
NOTAM FDC 6/3825 covers a 1.5-nautical-mile radius around the site near Waco and extends from the surface to 10,000 feet above ground level. The FAA cited hazards under 14 CFR 91.137(a)(3) and barred aircraft and drones from the zone. Tesla’s invitation to reservation holders already placed the event in Waco, about 20 minutes from McGregor, making the timing and location more than coincidental.
A TFR has appeared around SpaceX’s McGregor Testing Site up to 10,000ft and runs through until the 2nd of October 👀 pic.twitter.com/rcZ4p4JkLm
— Niall Anderson (@INiallAnderson) September 18, 2026
What stands out is the altitude. Typical recent TFRs at McGregor for engine static fires and component tests have used far lower ceilings, often around 2,000 feet. Raising the limit to 10,000 feet is unusually high even compared with some Starbase restrictions and signals operations that go beyond a standard ground-level engine test.
That extra airspace has fueled speculation about the long-promised SpaceX Package for the Roadster. Elon Musk has described cold-gas thrusters that could deliver sub-one-second 0-60 times and, more dramatically, brief lift-off. Reports earlier this year indicated Tesla planned a remote-controlled demonstration at McGregor in which the car would leave the ground with no one inside; spectators kept hundreds of yards away because of the noise.
The 10,000-foot envelope would give operators a large safety buffer even if the vehicle only hovers a short distance.
Tesla has not confirmed a flight demo. The company has only used the phrase “Go for launch” and posted a teaser image of the car on what looks like a launch pad. The TFR itself mentions only hazards. Still, closing airspace this high and this close to the reveal date strongly suggests the event will include more than a static display.
Whether the Roadster actually hovers on October 1 remains to be seen. What is certain is that the FAA has cleared a large vertical slice of Texas sky for whatever Tesla and SpaceX intend to show. Reservation holders heading to Waco will be among the first to find out if the car can do more than drive.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk drops a surprise update on Boring Company’s next big dig
Musk says Boring Company could shrink the Austin to San Antonio drive to just minutes.
Elon Musk says The Boring Company is working on what he called “a simple, precursor Hyperloop” tunnel connecting Austin and San Antonio, targeting speeds above 200 mph and cutting a drive that can take up to two and a half hours down to a consistent under 30 minutes. Musk posted the idea on X Sunday, in a reply to a repost of an AI generated video imagining a science fiction future with human colonies on other worlds, which he shared with the line “This is the future we shall bring into being.”
This is the future we shall bring into being pic.twitter.com/8aD0w8MDVc
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 20, 2026
The Boring Company’s own account picked up the idea in the same thread, adding a detail about how the trip would actually work: “Because Loop/Hyperloop is express (i.e. no intermediate stops), one could travel from an Austin parking lot to a favorite San Antonio restaurant in about 30 minutes. As long as they both have Loop stations.” That framing ties the proposed intercity link to the same station model the company already runs in Las Vegas, where riders enter the tunnel network through small, garage style stops rather than one central terminal.
This is not the company’s first run at the Austin to San Antonio corridor. Boring Company floated tunnels between the two cities as far back as 2021, and later competed for a separate San Antonio Loop project tied to the airport before that specific bid stalled. Pitches for tunnels in Chicago, Los Angeles, and a New York to Washington corridor have followed a similar pattern of big announcement without a shovel in the ground.
What is different this time is the balance sheet, especially since The Boring Company closed a 3 billion dollar funding round led by investors in the United Arab Emirates earlier this month at a valuation near 23 billion dollars, giving the tunneling company more capital to chase speculative projects than it had during its earlier Texas pitches. The company is also mid-build on two other intercity systems it has actually broken ground on, inc;luding a Nashville tunnel linking downtown to the airport, where a second boring machine finished commissioning in June, and its Las Vegas network, where the station count keeps climbing on paper faster than tunnels get dug.
That gap between announcement and execution is the reason to treat Sunday’s post as an opening bid rather than a project. A tunnel spanning roughly 80 miles between two metro areas, running at speeds Boring Company has not demonstrated over any real distance, would dwarf anything the company has built. For now, the Austin to San Antonio Hyperloop exists as a caption under an AI generated space video.