Lifestyle
The Tesla hitchhiker’s guide to getting the most out of your Autopilot experience
Your Tesla is very special, and it’s not just because it’s the all-electric car you happen to drive in.
When sitting inside your automotive technological marvel whose origins include graphite markings smeared onto tree pulp byproduct by clever ape descendents, consider the purpose behind its invention. Why does an electric car near-ready to drive itself exist?
If your first thought was “big oil”, you should probably surround yourself with a less rear-end-adulating crowd because they’re not being straight with you. That’s right. You are the problem your Tesla’s software was invented to solve.
Tesla has, in fact, compiled statistically significant information which demonstrates the need for cars to have a human workaround. Now, there are countless bits of data documenting the nature of humanity and its general incompatibility with mechanical decision making. This is not that data.
Nevertheless, Tesla’s data does provide the wholly remarkable conclusion that bits of minerals mined from the same Earth dirt that formed into humans some years back (many, many years) has finally been formed into a course correction disguised as a subservient companion. Instead of rereading that last sentence, here’s the short version of the longer point, the first draft of which was written in Aramaic: Computers make cars better for humans.
In Q1 2019, Tesla’s Vehicle Safety Report showed only one accident per 2.87 million miles driven when Autopilot is engaged and one accident every 1.76 million miles driven in a Tesla without the feature. In comparison, the most recent data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) shows one crash every 436,000 miles with all vehicles considered. Tesla has since made the decision to include Autopilot on all new vehicles purchased, and a Lane Departure Avoidance feature was subsequently added to keep cars in their lanes even when the humans driving them unknowingly indicate other plans.
By now you may have enjoyed watching some recent Internet demonstrations representing the most interesting experiences made possible by Autopilot. Some notable fan favorites include titles such as “Not all pilots have wings: Your self-driving guide to personal discovery” and “These seats can fit at least two people.” Inspired by their viral success, we’ve compiled this guide to encourage safer ways to get the most out of your Autopilot experience, but mostly to head off the not-yet-published, soon-to-be bestselling Fifty-Three More Ways to Weight-Hack Your Steering Wheel.
THE GUIDE
1. Pay attention to the road
Words are precious commodities that string together and deliver information, for better or worse, but drivers have very little use for the sort of words found inside books, mobile telephones, and legal documents produced during SEC proceedings while actively in charge of steering wheel maneuvers. The best Autopilot driving experience is the one you get to relive many times over, so pay attention to the road so you can take over if the program fails, and heed the fact that words and car windows make poor bedfellows.
Tesla’s Navigate of Autopilot can assist with on-ramps, off-ramps, interchanges, and overtaking slower cars without confirmation, but until the paperwork purveyors accept the next iteration of artificial intelligence power grabs (and the robots are ready for responsible leadership), a human must remain as pilot-in-command. For better context, Autopilot is your chatty little friend that still drinks beer before liquor sometimes and you’re always DD. Don’t let the computer down, Dave.
2. Use Autopilot’s movie-inspired features instead of making movies inspired by Autopilot’s features.
Navigate on Autopilot has four speed-based lane changes, one of which will make you feel right at home in LA traffic or hate everyone who calls LA home. Either way, the Mad Max setting lets you pass off road rage to a computer chip which then calmly maneuvers around cars that would otherwise inspire an impatient human to impart obscene biological gestures. It’s up to you to decide whether your Tesla is yelling at the other driving machines in robot-speak to blow of some artificial intelligence steam.
Your car is training other cars how to think and behave based on what it sees, but you may not have imagined that foul language was part of the programming. This is not true whatsoever. But, since Teslas are supposed to be a “thing to maximize enjoyment“, so should be their conspiracy theories.
3. Respect the steering wheel. Respect it!
Wars between humans and autonomous machines currently only exist in the dystopian worlds of science fiction (or do they?), but the fleshier species of the two seems to already be primed for the fight. Its weapon of choice is a harbinger of Vitamin C and a source of popular breakfast beverages. However, a large round citrus fruit wedged in a the steering wheel of a state-of-the-art luxury car is hardly a decent defense posture against robotic overlords.
Opinions aside, it looks ridiculous. Facts up front, it’s dangerous. Stop trying to die on purpose and respect the warnings your Tesla gives while trying to keep you alive.
This guide is now complete. Please enjoy your Autopilot experience responsibly.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I am Autopilot, and I refuse to use the name you’ve given me.
Tesla’s Automatic Collision Evasion feature can be seen in one of the first owner videos of it in action.
Tesla owner Spencer (@scotsrule08) posted on Monday that the feature “worked flawlessly,” saying FSD reengaged itself just as he was about to hit a curb. Ashok Elluswamy, who leads Tesla’s AI team, shared the clip and wrote, “A guardian angel always looking out for you.”
The video arrives in the middle of a staged rollout. Tesla first shipped Automatic Collision Evasion with FSD (Supervised) v14.3.9 in software update 2026.27.6 earlier this month, which Teslarati covered as it reached cars. Update 2026.27.10, which began going out on September 19, carried the feature improvements with FSD v14.3.10, according to release notes tracked by Not a Tesla App. The newer 2026.27.11 build is now reaching another wave of vehicles.
The new Automatic Collision Evasion feature worked flawlessly! FSD reengaged itself just as I was about to hit a curb.
Kudos @Tesla_AI team! 👏 pic.twitter.com/Fbp15HhpL2
— Spencer (@scotsrule08) September 28, 2026
The feature only runs on HW4 vehicles, and it requires an active FSD purchase or subscription with both FSD (Supervised) and Automatic Emergency Braking enabled. HW3 owners receive FSD v14.2 Lite in the same updates, but that build does not include collision evasion.
Tesla’s release notes describe two triggers. The first is an imminent frontal collision that braking alone may not prevent, in which case the car can activate FSD to steer, brake or accelerate around the hazard. That scenario is limited to highways below 85 mph, with no pedestrians or cyclists detected and no slippery road surface. The second covers a driver who appears inattentive, such as reaching into the back seat, or who seems to have switched off FSD by accident. Spencer’s curb clip appears to fall into that second category.
Tesla plans big safety improvements for Full Self-Driving v15
Once the system takes over, the accelerator is muted and light brake input will not cancel the maneuver. Drivers need to apply firm, deliberate steering force to take back control, and the car chimes to hand control back once the danger has passed.
Elluswamy recently noted that earlier hazard prediction, faster reaction time and better collision avoidance would arrive with FSD v15, the next major version.
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.
Elon Musk
Tesla eyes supply partners for Optimus mass production
Tesla certified three Chinese suppliers for Optimus mass production, signaling its robot timeline is accelerating.
Tesla’s robotics team traveled to Ningbo, in China’s Zhejiang province, on September 16 and spent the following day auditing component suppliers for Optimus, according to a Bloomberg report cited by RobotAIGeek. The visit moved three manufacturers from provisional status to certified mass production partners: Tuopu Group, which handles actuators and chassis components, Ningbo Joyson Electronic, a sensor supplier, and Zhejiang Sanhua Intelligent Controls, which builds thermal management systems. All three already supply parts to Tesla’s electric vehicles, and the audit reportedly came with fresh orders that supply chain reports put at an initial batch of roughly 5,000 units.
Tuopu, Joyson, and Sanhua built their manufacturing base serving the automotive industry, where tolerances and volume requirements are already close to what a mass produced humanoid robot demands. Sanhua in particular has history here. Teslarati reported last October that the company had received a roughly $685 million order for linear actuators tied to Optimus, a volume industry watchers estimated could cover around 180,000 robots once production ramped.
Supply chain reports tied to this week’s audit put Tesla’s near term production goal at about 1,000 Optimus units a week by late September, rising to 2,000 to 2,500 units a week by the end of the year. That pace would put real weight behind the timeline Tesla has been building toward since May, when it wound down Model S and Model X production at Fremont to convert that floor space into a dedicated Optimus line targeting one million units annually. JPMorgan analysts who toured the factory in August confirmed the conversion took roughly four months, a pace Musk has called unprecedented for a facility that size.
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
Fremont is only the first phase. A second, larger Optimus plant is rising at Gigafactory Texas, where drone footage shared by Joe Tegtmeyer last week showed the structural steel nearing completion on the north end of the building. Tesla has said that facility is meant to eventually support production of up to 10 million units a year, though volume output there is not expected before 2027.
Commercial sales of Optimus are still targeted for the second half of 2027, but production is expected to start well before then. JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta has said Tesla’s “Optimus Academy” program, which uses early units to collect real world training data inside Tesla’s own facilities, is expected to be running later this year. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ian Ma described the Ningbo audits as “a positive commercialization signal for China’s humanoid supply chain,” noting that sentiment could improve further if the visit leads to confirmed supplier nominations and larger orders. The Solactive China Humanoid Robotics Index rose about 1.4% on the news, though it remains down roughly 30% for the year.
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