The Tesla FSD Cannonball Record Just Fell Again, and It Wasn’t Close

Zack’s Model 3 outside Manhattan’s Red Ball Garage, the traditional New York bookend of the Cannonball Run. Credit: @BLKMDL3/X

A three-person team of Tesla owners says FSD Supervised just drove a Model 3 across the United States in 45 hours, 37 minutes and 50 seconds with zero interventions, cutting more than four hours off the autonomous Cannonball Run record they set in May.

Model 3 owner Zack (@BLKMDL3) announced the new time on X Thursday morning, alongside co-drivers Dan Burkland (@DBurkland) and Aaron (@AaronS5_). According to his post, the car covered 2,871 miles (about 4,620 km), averaged 238 Wh/mi (roughly 14.8 kWh/100 km), and FSD parked itself at every charger while handling 100% of the driving.

Those numbers beat the trio’s own run from this spring by 4 hours, 18 minutes and 7 seconds. On May 8, the same three left Manhattan’s Red Ball Garage in Zack’s Model 3 and reached the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach, California, in 49 hours, 55 minutes and 57 seconds on FSD v14.3.2, covering 2,833 miles at an average of 248 Wh/mi. The new run went 38 miles farther and still came in well ahead, which works out to an average of nearly 63 mph (about 101 km/h) from start to finish, charging stops included.

The Cannonball Run itself is an unsanctioned coast-to-coast dash between New York and Los Angeles that dates back to the 1970s, and the Red Ball Garage on Manhattan’s East Side is its traditional New York bookend. The autonomous version adds a brutal rule: the software has to do all of it. In January, a team led by Cannonball veteran Alex Roy drove a Model S from L.A. to New York on FSD v14.2.2.3 in 58 hours and 22 minutes, covering 3,081 miles through winter snow and ice. Burkland, Zack and Aaron set out in May specifically to beat that mark, and Thursday’s time is now nearly 13 hours quicker than Roy’s.

Burkland spelled out the team’s ground rules in a long write-up of the May run he posted in July, including a section defining exactly what counts as an intervention. Zack has said that on the first record he never touched the pedals or the turn-signal stalk across the entire country, and the new post makes the same claim of zero interventions, with FSD handling every charger stop on its own.

Burkland’s own posts from this week show how much those parking stops can matter. Driving his Model S Plaid from Minnesota to Austin on Wednesday, he had to correct FSD at the Belton, Missouri Supercharger after it keyed off old painted lines that hadn’t been fully removed. That’s the kind of moment that would have ended a zero-intervention Cannonball attempt on the spot. He has also been documenting FSD v14.3.11’s highway speed behaviour on the Standard profile, noting it now holds about 74 mph in 70 mph zones and 76 mph in 75 mph zones, and that he picked up a ticket on v14.3.10 because the system didn’t slow for 55 mph work-zone signs.

What the record post doesn’t say is when the drive actually happened, which direction the team went, which FSD build the car was running, or how many charging stops the trip took. Asked in replies whether the run was done on v14.3 Lite, the version for older Hardware 3 cars, Burkland answered “No.” The team hasn’t yet released video or a full route log for the new run, and like every Cannonball time before it, the result is self-reported rather than certified by any official body.

The announcement landed as Zack and Burkland gathered in Austin for this weekend’s X Takeover owners’ event, and Aaron marked the moment with a quote post that read, simply, “Oops, we did it again!” Canada has had its own version of the challenge, too: back in May, Model 3 owner David Moss drove from Horseshoe Bay, B.C., to Halifax without taking over once.

Once the team posts its route log and footage, 45 hours and 37 minutes becomes the time every FSD record chaser has to beat. Burkland has counted a new FSD point release landing roughly every 19 days since v14.3.3, so the next attempt could be running noticeably newer software than this one did, and the same three have already shown they’re happy to go after their own record.