A select number of all-electric Tesla Cybertrucks now have the ability to drive on US roads hands-free, after the automaker pushed an update to the vehicles this morning. Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy wrote in the parts of road driving.
“Good job,” Tesla CEO (and X owner) Elon Musk responded to your AI boss.
The feature appears to be in “early access,” meaning it is available only to some Cybertruck owners who purchased the feature. It’s unclear when the automaker will roll out the feature more widely. Tesla, which disbanded its public relations team in 2021, did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
Tesla owners manuals maintain that the fully self-driving feature, or “FSD (supervised),” should be used only if drivers are paying attention to the road. The feature is reportedly disabled if it detects that drivers are looking elsewhere. Critics have argued that Tesla’s marketing incorrectly leads drivers to assume that the FSD can actually drive itself and that the automaker has not been proactive in preventing driver misuse.
Customers who purchased base model Cybertrucks early, on pre-order, paid $7,000 for access to the drive feature, and some waited nearly a year for it to be available on their trucks. Tesla owners can now subscribe to the FSD (supervised) feature for $99 per month.
A Cybertruck driver reported in X that, as conducted this morning, the function is “working well.”
The introduction of this feature is much-needed good news for Cybertruck, which has faced a difficult introduction into Tesla’s lineup. The vehicle was delayed for years by the Covid-19 pandemic and engineering problems. (A leaked “alpha” report on the vehicle, first reported by WIRED, found the truck had serious braking, handling and noise problems.)
The all-electric truck has also been the subject of a a handful of security recallsincluding one in which the company had to repair or replace accelerator pedals that had become stuck.
As more automakers jump into the electrification race and other manufacturers erode Tesla’s huge lead in electric cars, Musk and company seem to believe that AI-enabled “self-driving” features will help Tesla recover. its advantage. “Tesla’s overwhelming value is autonomy,” Musk told investors this summer.
The US traffic safety regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, found that Tesla’s Autopilot feature, an older, less sophisticated version of FSD, did not sufficiently prevent drivers from harm use and was involved in 13 fatal accidents between 2018 and 2023. After a years-long investigation into Autopilot, Tesla last year recalled 2 million vehicles with Autopilot. (The automaker said it disagreed with the government’s conclusions.)
Earlier this year, Tesla settled a lawsuit Brought to you by the family of a Northern California man who died while using Autopilot in his Model
Tesla too faces class action lawsuit alleging that he misled customers who bought Teslas after Musk promised the cars had everything they needed to drive autonomously. Eight years later, Tesla has made significant improvements to its driverless features and plans to make a lot of money with this feature, but it has not yet produced self-driving technology.
That could change this month. Musk has promised that Tesla will unveil a self-driving taxi, calling it Cybercab, at an event in Southern California on October 10.
