This one is almost too rich.
My neighbor purchased a Tesla a year ago and so was in a position to take advantage of Elon’s offer in late March of free full self-driving for a month. We went out to the local Chinese restaurant last night (my wife had book group).
I had asked, facetiously, “Shall we let Elon drive”? I meant, shall we take your car? But he pulled into my drive and told me that Elon really was going to drive.
Since he was head-in, the car couldn’t figure out how to back out. Fine, a little manual assist, and off we go. Elon chose the stupid route, the ugly one with all the traffic. Fine enough. Except for getting spooked from time to time and being by turns overly cautious and overly aggressive, the car got us to the place and even managed to back into the parking space of my neighbor’s choosing.
We sat at the bar, ate and drank, and were thankful that Elon was going to be driving us home. To be clear, the driver has to touch the wheel once in a while and otherwise demonstrate awareness, but the car really was making almost all the decisions.
On the way home, everything went smoothly. The car pulled left to make the left turn and performed other amazing feats that surely a human can’t. The Tesla pulled into his drive. Fine. And then started driving across his lawn, perhaps toward the front door (evidence in pic above). A thin scrim of snow preserved the evidence until this morning, when I was able to capture the faux pas (fausse roue?). My neighbor has decided that TWELVE GRAND is a little rich for a janky capability that adds little to the baseline driver-assist package that comes with the car.
