Tesla Full Self-Driving Reviewed by Consumer Reports [VIDEO]

Tesla has built up a reputation in the automotive industry by attacking two main initiatives: building sleek electric vehicles and pursuing technology to create the world’s first fully autonomous self-driving cars. Tesla is now claiming that every new vehicle that they are producing contains the necessary hardware to be fully autonomous and will gain self-driving capabilities when subsequent software packages are released over the air.

As of August 2020, it costs Tesla owners $8,000 USD to tap into the self-driving capabilities of their vehicle, an add-on to Autopilot. This self-driving suite includes features such as Navigate on Autopilot, Auto Lane Change, Autopark, Summon, Smart Summon, and Traffic Light and Stop Sign.

Reportedly, with the latest software package installed, features like Auto Lane Change and Summon worked pretty much as advertised, allowing drivers to change lanes at the push of a button and call their car to them without a driver behind the wheel, respectively. Autopark, however, can apparently be difficult to initiate and does not always park straight, according to Consumer Reports, which posted a review of Full Self-Driving features.

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Smart Summon and Navigate on Autopilot capabilities both proved to be fairly unreliable. When Smart Summon was engaged, the vehicle actually went into the wrong lane and failed to stop at stop signs. In Navigate on Autopilot mode, the software failed to identify the desired exit and seemed as if it would drive down the highway indefinitely, according to Consumer Reports.

It seems that Tesla has some major kinks to work out with its self-driving software, but as the fleet continues to share data with the company daily, software improvements will keep making things better and better.