My First Autonomous Drive

I took delivery of my brand-new 2025 Tesla Model 3 with Full Self Driving (Supervised) on Thursday, January 30th. I have only put 63 miles on the odometer in that time, but I have truly driven about 10 of those miles. The remainder have all been done autonomously, and it has changed my mind on many aspects of the company, the state of technology, and the shape of our future.

First, I suppose I need to justify my purchase decision. It is ridiculous that I have to do this, but based on the reactions from those I tried to share it with, I suppose it is necessary. Let me stress that I placed my order for this vehicle before the second inauguration of President Donald Trump in January 2025. This is because during that event, the CEO of Tesla took some actions that have sparked a tremendous amount of controversy. That controversy doesn't necessarily shape my opinion of the company too much, but the fact that I am constantly confronted with it is a little ridiculous. The vast majority of people I have discussed my purchase with draw a direct link between my purchase of that company's product and the actions of that company's CEO. It is preposterous and downright insulting. Making a huge purchase like this doesn't come around every day, and when I shared this moment with friends expecting to celebrate together, I was judged instead.

I have my opinions of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, which I will not share here. However, neither those opinions nor his actions had any bearing on my decision to purchase this vehicle. My decision comes down to my family's situation, recent events within my family, and my career. My household owns three vehicles: a Mazda RX8 (my childhood dream car), a Ford Expedition, and—before purchasing the Model 3—a Ford F150. The Mazda is a toy and can be ignored for the purposes of this conversation. The Ford Expedition is primarily for shuttling my family members around. Between my wife and I, we have three children, and the F150 was starting to get cramped. We kept the F150 because we purchased it brand new; it was in great condition, and the utility speaks for itself. However, it was the F150 I ultimately decided to trade in for the Tesla.

In early January, the F150 started to suffer transmission issues. The fifth anniversary of purchasing this truck was coming up in early February, and that spooked me because the warranty expires at that time. I immediately tried to contact Ford to conduct warranty repairs, but every dealership I spoke with said they couldn't even see me until after my warranty expired due to having such a long queue of customers. Since my truck started showing signs of major mechanical faults as soon as it got so close to the warranty expiration, I had already decided there was no way I was keeping it. I didn't want to get the transmission fixed just for something else to go wrong shortly after and for it to become a lemon right after the warranty expires. This is not my first rodeo, and I have been in this position before, in 2015, with my Ford Fusion. What I did then was take it to the dealership for warranty repairs, and while it was being repaired, I walked around the lot and picked out my new car. I had planned to do the same thing here.

Once the service person on the phone told me they would not be able to help me, I asked to speak with his manager, hoping they could expedite me based on the warranty deadlines. The person refused to let me speak with their manager. So I asked to speak with the salesperson who sold me the truck and the previous three vehicles I had purchased from that dealership. I was told he had retired. That made sense; he had worked at that dealership since 1992, before I was even born. I asked to speak with his son and was told he was busy with another customer. That was understandable, so instead, I asked to speak with the Sales Manager, who originally sold me my first two vehicles at that dealership. That is when the service person told me, "Sales can't help you." I was shocked, completely taken aback. "Sales can't help me?" I asked. "I don't see how they could help you with a transmission issue." Well, okay then.

Now I had been following Tesla's advancements with AI. Being an employee at Microsoft, keeping up with AI is very important to me and my career. I had toyed around in my head with the idea of getting a Tesla before, but it never made fiscal or practical sense with three vehicles in perfect condition that met our needs. However, now the situation had changed. I called Tesla, not entirely committed to the idea just yet, but within 20 minutes I had an order placed for a Tesla Model 3. The purchase process was very different from what I was used to. I didn't go anywhere. Because of how rowdy my house gets with three young boys living in it, I usually pace my front yard when I am on the phone handling business. During that 20 minutes of pacing my yard, the salesperson walked me through downloading the Tesla mobile app on my phone, creating an account, choosing my car from their inventory, and placing the order. From there, I would get notifications over the next several days as the process proceeded. I was asked to provide driver's licenses for my wife and I. I was asked to take photos of my trade-in vehicle and its registration. I applied for and accepted financial terms, scheduled my delivery date, time, and location, and signed all the paperwork. The largest factor that helped facilitate this purchase was that Tesla offered me top dollar for my trade in, despite knowing it had front-end damage and an emerging mechanical flaw. "Let us get that fart bag off the road" I was told. Finally, the day had come—well, actually, it hadn't yet. I was originally scheduled for Sunday, February 2nd. However, late on the Wednesday before, I received a text message that the vehicle had arrived at the location early and I could pick it up the next day.

The delivery process was very straightforward. My wife and I arrived at the Tesla facility in Plano in our F150. We parked and went inside, where we were asked to wait in the waiting area on the far end of the showroom floor. I didn't even get seated before another person came from the back and asked us to join him in the delivery center. He walked us into a very nice-looking repair center and indoor parking lot. There was a freestanding counter in front of the parking lot with two people standing there with laptops. One of the nice women behind the counter walked me through accepting my delivery through the app, asked us to sign a couple of papers, and then told us my car was in bay 5. I gave her the keys to the F150 and went to my new car. As we approached, I noticed a paper tent on the dash congratulating me on my purchase. My phone connected to the car, and it unlocked for me. After inspecting the car inside and out, we loaded up and left the parking lot. I knew that the car required a few miles of manual driving in order for its cameras and self-driving system to calibrate. As soon as that happened, I received a message from the car saying it was ready to activate. I pulled over, configured a few options in the software, and hit the button.

My first attempt at self-driving did not go so smoothly. Now that I have a few miles of self-driving under my belt, I think in hindsight everything was fine, and I was just overly nervous. The car pulled out of the parking lot and approached an unguarded intersection with a major road to make a right-hand turn onto that road. However, less than 50 feet to the left of us was where that major road had an intersection with another major road. This was the Westside Connector at Plano Parkway and Preston Road. The car approached the stop sign and came to a complete stop. However, as it went to pull onto the major roadway, other cars were zipping onto that roadway from the other major intersection and merging onto the road we were trying to pull out onto. The car hesitated, and the steering wheel jittered back and forth.

In my mind, there was no reason for the steering wheel to move back and forth like that or for it to miss two opportunities to merge onto the road. I was basing these assumptions on how I would have driven. In reality, I've learned that the jittering is more of a presence indicator to make sure I am paying attention, and it is also an exaggerated indication that the car is adjusting its navigation. I freaked out, grabbed the steering wheel, and forced us into the intersection. Self-driving disconnected, and I drove us onto the freeway. This is where I tried again.

I assumed that if I got the car going and activated full self-driving from there, it would do much better, and it did. I got us onto 161 President George Bush Turnpike and activated Full Self Driving. It did phenomenally well, but there wasn't really much of a challenge. I closely monitored the car's actions and decisions and was pretty pleased with how it was doing until we approached Interstate 35E. Now, from here I would have taken 161 all the way to 183 Airport Freeway. However, the car decided to take I35E northbound. I nearly took over before I discovered that the unexpected exit it was setting us up for was not an issue with the self-driving system, but the navigation system. I double-checked the navigation system, and it turns out it was avoiding a crash on 161 further up ahead. Okay, cool, that gives me a bit more confidence. That was until the second exit...

The car successfully navigated the I35E/161 interchange and merged us onto I35E northbound. Checking navigation, it planned to merge us onto 121 eastbound a few miles up ahead. This is where navigation really failed. I'm not sure I can blame navigation for this problem, because a few months ago it would have been correct, but due to a recent traffic pattern change, the exit changed from being on the left side of the highway to being on the right side. I noticed in time that it was about to take the ramp on the wrong side of the road. So I grabbed the wheel and carefully merged us onto the correct ramp. Once on 121 eastbound, I activated Self Driving again.

It's really funny to me that navigation chose this route on my very first drive in a Tesla while using Full Self Driving. That's because this route takes me through an area that I closely associate with a story that occurred in 2017 involving a fatal Tesla crash. Every time I pass through the 121/Freeport Parkway intersection, I always think of that story, and now here I was in a Tesla, on my first drive using Full Self Driving, about to go through that very area where this person died doing the exact same thing. Everything was fine. The occurrence ended up being extremely uneventful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TC8945MZGY

As we passed the airport, the navigation system again chose a route I disagreed with. Just north of the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, 121 and 114 briefly merge before splitting again, and I expect to take 121 all the way to Airport Freeway. However, the navigation system decided it wanted to take Highway 26, which you can jump on shortly after merging with traffic for 114. As I noticed the car starting to take this route, I took over, forced us to stay on 121, and reactivated Full Self Driving. Again, this seemed to be a navigation issue rather than a full self-driving issue. When the car was in control, it remained safe the whole time, even performing lane changes to take a suboptimal route.

The drive down 121 through Bedford was mostly uneventful until we reached the merge with Airport Freeway. As we approached the merge, I noticed the car was lining us up to take the toll road. Double-checking navigation, it did indeed seem that was its intention. I decided to try something. Instead of taking over and forcing the car onto the path I wanted, maybe I could just activate its blinker and have it change lanes off of that ramp instead. It worked like a charm. I activated the right blinker, it automatically sped up to get in front of the car that was pacing us on the right, and it safely merged over off the ramp for the toll road. Then something very interesting happened. The car slowed down very suddenly. At first, I was scared. I thought it was going to defy me and try to merge back onto the toll road ramp at the last second. This would have been unacceptable and dangerous. I almost grabbed the wheel to prevent it from turning onto the ramp, but I noticed it wasn't trying to change lanes. It had not activated the turn signal, and the navigation computer had already switched to follow my intended path. I looked up just in time to see a Jeep fly off the ramp, far too late after probably realizing at the last second they were headed onto a toll road. Had my Tesla not slowed down when it did, that Jeep would likely have hit us. Phenomenal both on the Tesla for its defensive driving and on the Jeep for its stupidity.

Now, there was one part of this trip that I was really looking forward to testing FSD on, and that was my neighborhood. For the last 8 months, my neighborhood has been under severe construction that has greatly disrupted the traffic patterns. One of the major arteries through my neighborhood is limited to one-way traffic, some roads are closed to through traffic, and another road has been completely deleted. The vehicle handled the roads in my neighborhood flawlessly. Since that first drive, I have approached this construction from different angles, and it always handles it exactly how I would.

This completed my first drive in my 2025 Tesla Model 3 with Full Self Driving. When I took delivery of my vehicle, it was still on the older v12 of FSD. However, in early February, only a few weeks after taking delivery, I received the option to install the v13 beta. I will have much to share about that soon.