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Tesla FSD vs REAL LA Streets | Insane Edge Case Torture Test (Mount Washington + 110 Freeway)
Tesla FSD vs REAL LA Streets | Insane Edge Case Torture Test (Mount Washington + 110 Freeway)
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About this episode
A live, in-car torture test pits Tesla FSD (camera-only, v14.2.2.5, HW4) against real downtown Los Angeles chaos—starting on the 110 freeway and climbing to Mount Washington’s narrow, unmarked, trash-day roads near the Self-Realization Fellowship. Johnny, a first-time FSD user, toggles Mad Max mode and watches the car handle double yellows, potholes/shadows, pedestrians/ghost-like phantom detections, tight turns, and stop-sign edge cases. Highlights include impressive “human-like” evasions and aggressive on-ramp merging, plus frustrations like slow stop-sign timing and an illegal parking spot at the end.
Topics:
tesla fsd camera-only performance
mad max vs chill driving modes
edge-case city streets without lane markings
mount washington narrow unmarked roads
110 freeway on-ramp acceleration test
stop-sign behavior and california-roll style
phantom pedestrian/ghost detection
obstacle avoidance (potholes, shadows, debris)
route planning quirks and navigation failures
illegal parking and disengagement limits
Cars:
Ford Ecosport
Ford Edge
Mercedes-Benz S-Class
Rivian R1T
Rivian R2
Tesla Model 3
Tesla Model X
Tesla Model Y
Toyota Camry
Volkswagen ID.4
We put Tesla’s latest Full Self-Driving (FSD v14) to the ultimate real-world test—no easy suburban routes, no perfect conditions. Instead, we dropped it straight into old Los Angeles chaos: ⚠️ Blind corners ⚠️ One-lane mountain roads ⚠️ Garbage trucks, pedestrians, and zero lane markings ⚠️ The infamous 110 freeway on-ramp (with basically NO acceleration lane) This is a true edge-case torture test—and the results are wild.
Filter:
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Ford Edge
"This is what we want to do. This is like an edge case torture test. With camera only."
Car
Rivian R2
"..., Technical Editor, immediately after the Rivian R2 debut. That one actually got a lot of great comm..."
Car
Ford Eco Sport
"Here comes Eco... what is it called? Ford Eco Sport? Yeah, which was neither Eco nor Sport."
Car
Rivian R1T
"And then the other thing I was going to ask you is, do you have a Rivian R1-T Gen 1 2022? So you have the old hardware, but do you have you have you"
Car
Tesla Model 3
"..., I've noticed. I mean, back when do we have the Model 3 for the first time? That was like 2015, 416?"
Car
Tesla Model X
"...think it was the Model 3. It might have been the Model X. But I had to go visit my mom."
Car
Volkswagen Id4
"There's a guy walking, there's a scooter. Is that an ID.4 that I take one? How's it take one?"
Car
Mercedes-Benz Sclass
"Definitely give theirs shot, there's a shot, although the major update is CLA and then S-Class with the latest version of a drive pilot."
Select text to request an explanation
This is what we want to do.
This is like an edge case torture test.
With camera only.
Look, that car just swerved right around the garbage truck.
Over a double yellow.
Didn't even flinch.
Well, basically pulled right next to them
to park, to let the camera through.
That was great.
What is going on here?
Oh, it seems like there's a person.
There's no person.
Maybe it's he's a ghost.
And this is what we're here for.
This is potentially dangerous.
We're at a stop sign on a freeway.
We have 15 feet of acceleration.
And traffic is reasonable.
Welcome to The Inevitable, a podcast by Motor Trend.
Hi there.
Welcome to The Inevitable.
This is Motor Trends podcast, our podcast about, well,
the future of cars.
And in this one, the future of self-driving.
And we are in a 2022 Tesla Model Y.
2023.
Sorry, 2023.
So it's the one owned by Motor Trend.
And it's got full self-driving, the latest version,
which is like 14.2.2.5 and the hardware is version four.
And we're going to, for the first time ever,
I'm going to engage it.
I mean, my first time ever.
Also, they filmed a repo man right there with a burn in the body.
I got things you were pointing at him.
Yeah, we were.
Ready?
Yep.
OK.
Short press.
Go to the Self-Realization Fellowship.
Like it, right?
Send on a fail.
OK.
And then you hit it.
Start self-driving.
Start self-driving.
Here we go.
All right.
And The Inevitable podcast is brought to you by nobody.
We're looking for a sponsor.
So if you want to sponsor us, shoot me note
at edward.loh at Hearst, H-E-R-S-T, dot com.
Or slide into Johnny Rai's Instagram DMs.
And yes, we are doing this episode live and direct.
Johnny has had how much experience
with full self-driving FSD ever?
Not like 30 seconds.
So far.
Yeah, I've never, I've never.
You know, it's just one of those funny things.
I never, I'm never in a Tesla.
Maybe like in the back of a Lyft or an Uber or something.
But I, they don't have any press cars.
I don't communicate with anyone at Tesla anymore.
And yeah, so I've never done it.
I hear it's great.
Talk to everyone on staff.
They say it's amazing.
I talked to like Kyle Conner, says it's amazing.
Great.
But what we're doing right now is a bit of a torture test,
we hope, because we're in downtown Los Angeles.
We're actually crossing the 4th Street Bridge.
Yep.
There's a 6th Street Bridge.
Famous, lots of movies filmed on these bridges.
Yeah.
But it's difficult because it's just
an old crowded part of town with strange traffic patterns.
And it's just, it's just not like a suburban grid.
So it's a good test for any self-driving system.
So.
But we're heading to.
The top of Mount Washington.
Top of Mount Washington.
It's a real old part of LA where I used to live, actually.
This place called the Self-Realization Fellowship.
I'm trying to make the joke about full self-driving.
Full self-driving, full self-realization.
But we also go on the 110 North, which
is the world's oldest freeway, the first freeway.
The first freeway.
And it's treacherous for humans.
Most people that aren't into cars, they're like, oh,
I hate the 110.
You have to step on the gas pedal.
It's very, very scary.
Right.
But let me give you a little bit more setup.
Yeah.
I was acting surprised, like I didn't know
that Johnny had never been.
And it tells us what that was.
This is intentional for you dedicated listeners.
This is the second one we're doing.
The first one we're doing is Frank, Marcus,
Motor Trends, Technical Editor, immediately
after the Rivian R2 debut.
That one actually got a lot of great comments, a lot of views
relative to each episode.
And a lot of folks were chiming in about the experience,
throwing some snark at Port Frank saying, hey,
you know, this old school engineer's
got to get his head straight.
So here we are trying it again with another, actually,
Frank had more experience with FSD
because he had driven, I think, version 12 and version 13.
Johnny is actually an FSD version.
Virgin.
Now that you're saying that, I might have actually
been in one one time, but it didn't work well.
It was a very early version.
OK.
I don't remember.
Well.
Yeah.
But I've done a lot of real self-driving.
Yeah.
I mean, I've done a lot of own self-driving.
No, no, no.
But I've done a lot like the Mercedes or GM systems
or whatever.
I'm used to not touching a steering wheel on long trips.
On the highway.
But never on the highway.
No, never on city streets.
Never on point-to-point city streets, which is super bizarre.
No, I find it very comfortable.
I'm a big Waymo fan.
OK.
You know, I understand a bit how it works.
But you like killing dogs.
I would like you.
You like crashing into park cars?
I like stopping rapid response to mass shootings in Austin,
Texas.
Yes, it's our best tech winner I should stop ripping on.
Yeah, it is though.
Waymo is great.
No, I'm very comfortable with it.
I'm really excited about Mad Max mode
because I do like, how do I put this?
I'm not a big believer in speed limits.
I think they're often arbitrary and don't actually
do anything other than like to tax on poor people.
And so I like the fact that this doesn't follow them.
Whereas like when we did the, remember we were in the point-to-point
the Rivian?
Yep.
And I'm like, is it going to exceed 30 miles an hour?
And they're like, it's just a bunch of like nerdy engineers
who are told not to like, you know,
to say anything to us and whatever.
And but, you know, come on, like no one goes 30.
It's stupid.
So we'll see.
I'm very excited.
So let's keep going with a little bit more of the setup here.
In the back is our producer Brent, who may chime in here
and there when we screw up or running out of time.
Or with a creepy backseat guy.
Creepy backseat guy.
Brent's our producer for all sorts of video
and increasingly the podcast and audio stuff.
So thank you, Brent.
And then the one thing I didn't go through with any of this,
I gave Johnny a little bit of a background
on just where the cameras are, but I haven't told him
actually anything about what to do in an emergency.
Are they on the wheel?
Yes.
OK.
So we are under full self-driving version 14.
If you're at all uncomfortable with whatever
the vehicle is doing, take the wheel.
You can also lightly dab the brake,
and it will also release you from FSD.
But of course, I don't suggest that when we're on the freeway.
You'll feel the resistance.
And then it will bring up a little thing like, hey,
FSD was disabled.
And then it'll ask you why.
And if you want to, you can hit the button
and give a verbal like a 15 second.
OK.
Like, oh, the car wanted to do this.
I thought it was dumb.
I do that like on a daily basis because I'm
trying to improve the route planning around my house.
So you can do that.
I have somebody calling me, which I'm not going to take.
Also listening to some rock.
If you're watching the screen, we
do have a tire fault for one of our TPMS sensors.
Don't worry about it.
It's totally fine.
Yeah, totally fine.
The tire pressures are all.
Can I butt in for a second?
That's the 110.
That's like an alternate route.
How do we say, hey, take the 110?
Good question.
I would long press and bring up Grock and ask
Grock to adjust the navigation route so that we're on the 110.
Here we go.
Grock, can you adjust the navigation route
so that this takes the 110 north towards Pasadena?
Sorry, I don't have a tool to directly adjust routes like that.
Check the navigation settings on the screen
to tweak it for the 110 north to Pasadena.
OK, can I touch it?
You might be able to.
You can also touch the 110.
Aha, there you go.
All right, great.
Oh, this is great.
Yeah, it's great.
What you want?
OK, and to Johnny's point, one of the reasons
why we wanted to try the 110, it's
the oldest freeway in existence.
It was the first freeway created.
And if you have ever been on the 110
or live in this part of sort of north or central Los Angeles
and head to Pasadena.
We call it Northeast LA.
Yeah, you'll know that the acceleration lanes
to get onto the freeway were made when cars topped out
at maybe 50 miles an hour.
Well, it was originally called the Arroyo Seco Parkway.
And when it opened, I think the top speed on it
was 45 miles an hour.
And then it became kind of a major freeway.
But it also, remember the 110, that was the third name.
Because what it used to be was, if you were heading south on it,
you're taking the harbor.
Yes.
Until you got to the harbor.
You're going to the harbor.
And then if you were going north, it was Pasadena.
Because you're going to Pasadena.
And that's why a lot of people in LA,
we have a funny name for our freeways.
So 45 is the San Diego freeway.
That's right.
Because we were San Diego.
Yeah, 45 north, which is the weirdest thing to say.
But yeah.
Right.
And we also say the.
You know why we say the instead of just 405?
Yes.
But I'll let you tell it, Mr. LA in a minute.
Yeah.
See, it was a, what's his name?
Sig, Sigler guy.
Oh yeah.
This is his last name.
Oh, hey, it did that well.
Yes.
Nice.
That's a tricky little unwrap.
And it took like an aggressive line through.
Right.
Anyways.
Yeah, we say the, like in Northern California,
they say 101, like total weirdos.
But it's the one on one with big belief.
Okay.
The other thing I want to mention on setup is up here,
you see under self, self driving, you can adjust between
where we're currently in hurry.
Yeah.
You can go if you scroll up, you can go to Mad Max mode.
Okay.
Or you can go down into standard mode, chill.
And then there's even slower one, which is sloth.
So like chill and sloth basically will keep you in the
slow lane and never change lanes.
Okay.
Hurry.
I suggest for most of Los Angeles.
Okay, but let's Mad Max.
Mad Max it if you like.
All right.
And then the other thing is, if you wanted to check how
you're doing, this is what Mad Max looks like,
the speed profile, the offset.
So we're going to go 10 miles up.
Here's a wild ramp.
This is a great ramp.
So this is like, you basically go from freeway speeds to a
five mile an hour right.
Yes.
I used to live around here.
I used to live off Via Marisol.
Oh, Via Marisol is the one.
We'll get there.
Okay.
Nice.
So yeah.
Very well done.
All right.
Yeah, this is, I used to live off this exit actually.
This is about 20s.
Right after college.
Cool history on the 110, Arroyo Seco Parkway.
All right, we didn't know Grock was listening to us the
whole time.
Yeah, it's always listening.
Turn off.
All right.
So let's just do a gut check.
Again, we remember that we have people listening.
Yeah.
We are cruising now over the 110 freeway on an overpass.
Lots of stop signs, lots of strange angles.
Are we south past here?
No, we're Boyle Heights.
We're in Mount Washington.
This is Mount Washington.
Yeah, in fact, Mount Washington is right in front of us.
And Mount Washington, since I'm just giving you a history
lesson here, this was originally like a real estate deal.
Where we're going to, the Self Realization Fellowship, used
to be a hotel.
And they wanted to sell people who live far away in
downtown summer homes.
And so they actually built a funicular that went up Avenue
45.
And you would take a red car train down Figueroa here.
You'd get off, you'd hop on the funicular, and it would go
to the top.
And then they'd give you, you could stay there for the
night for free, but they'd give you a real estate pitch
about you should buy a house here.
And Mount Washington is wild, because it's a part of Los
Angeles that still has dirt roads.
Now, this is going, I think the Yiddish term is, this is
going for a cocktail way to get to the Self Realization
Fellowship.
It's not doing these crazy routes.
It's taking like a, kind of a long way.
Do you want to do that crazy routes?
Can we tell it to do the crazy routes?
Let me try.
Want to do it?
No.
I think because we passed the, it doesn't want to drive on
the little, that's what we wanted, is to go on the crazy
little ones.
Yeah.
Why don't we drag it?
Well, we're going to annoy the people who are super
tells the power users.
Because we can't figure out.
Well, we can use it on the way back.
On the way down.
Yeah, yeah, we can trick it.
So we can just say go to like Figueroa, you know,
something like that.
Yeah.
But anyway, it's nice little cruise.
Oh, this is Griffith Park.
No, no, this is, no, this is the.
What park is this?
I don't know.
Just some little park in Mount Washington.
This is Sycamore Grove Park.
Sorry, I was confused.
No, Griffith Park's about 15 miles that way.
Oh, yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
What's that big hill?
Nothing.
That's Herman.
So across the 110 is Herman, California.
I don't get out to.
So remember our photographer guy, Brian,
or whatever his actual job title is now?
Brian Vance.
Brian Vance was saying he was talking about a restaurant
called The Herman, which just opened up in Herman,
which is like I live in Glassel Park,
which no one's ever heard of.
Even if you live from LA.
No one's heard of Herman, California,
which is just a suburb of LA.
You got a camera on this cool motorcycle guy?
Oh, yeah.
OK.
All right.
Well, his tire is not completely flat in the middle.
So maybe he does corner.
It's a squeak.
All right, we're in Mad Max.
Is it going to do it?
It is going to do it.
Nice.
So what I'm saying nice is there was two cars coming.
Unprotected left.
Unprotected left.
And I would have easily totally made that left.
But most Waymos would never have done it.
So most Uber drivers wouldn't even risk that.
But he just totally did it, which was great.
Yeah, actually.
By the way, this is very impressive.
And when I'm saying impressive, I haven't even
thought about the fact that this car is driving itself.
With camera only.
And look, that car just swerved right around the garbage
truck over a double yellow.
Didn't even flinch.
There's no flinch.
There was no hard brake.
Yeah.
There was no pause.
Awesome.
Pretty incredible.
That's great.
So let me go through a couple of some things
that I've noticed, which are the system is very, very good.
It's very oddly very human-like.
I would, if you can, while you're talking and experiencing it,
pay attention to little things on the road
that you would notice as a human driver.
I've noticed the thing that you will...
Trash can sticking out.
Well, a floating paper bag.
I've noticed that it actually just swerved
just right around it, but stayed in the lane.
Big plastic bags swirling overhead.
Didn't freak out.
The weirdest thing is this was on the La Cienega heading into LA.
Pothole in my lane over on the left side.
And then a really hard black shadow from a sign
that also was about whatever, 100 feet just after the pothole.
The car knew to swerve a little bit for the pothole
and then went right through the black shadow,
which was very similarly shaped.
I thought, like, how does this thing kind of know?
I mean, I guess it's reading the street sign.
Hey, real quick update.
It actually is going to take us up a nice little twisty route.
This is good.
This was the point of going to Mount Washington.
And this is challenging because it's very narrow roads.
Here comes Eco... what is it called?
Ford Eco Sport?
Yeah, which was neither Eco nor Sport.
But yeah, it's trash days.
There's garbage cans everywhere.
This is a very narrow Los Angeles kind of hill road.
Two lane traffing each direction.
Double yellow.
Double yellow for now.
I was going to go away.
I think that goes away.
Yeah, now it's basically a one lane road.
So let's see. This is great.
So if anybody comes bombing down the road,
like, we're going to put, we'll have our lives at risk here.
OK, this is great.
So.
Oh, wow. OK.
And then the other thing I was going to ask you is,
do you have a Rivian R1-T Gen 1 2022?
So you have the old hardware, but do you have you have you
been driving in universal hands free
or is that not available here?
When I had it, I had a press car,
I had the Quad SUV press car,
and I went out to Vegas for CES in it.
But unfortunately, there was a glitch
that it had universal hands free.
It wouldn't activate.
And I had, like, you know, all the Rivian engineers
calling and trying to figure it out.
And it turned out it was just like a glitch.
They had to, I don't know, like a sensor was at a whack or something.
So it wouldn't turn on.
Not a lot, not a lot of time in, in, but you've used their.
I use their horrible Gen 1 system,
which doesn't work at all.
Very poor lane center.
It's just very poor everything.
It's the worst in the industry.
It's weird.
There's some walkers here, and you can see them.
They'll show up, which I always think is cool.
Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Yeah.
This is this is wild.
This is really good. This is really impressive.
And it's not actually Mad Maxing.
Not at all.
It's it's being reasonable.
It's going 25.
It's 25 mile an hour speed limit and it's doing 22, 23 right now.
That's about how fast I would drive here,
because this is like little kids central.
There's an elementary school right up here.
Again, garbage day is the worst.
You know, just like and this is a big van coming.
I've got I'm very impressed.
I'm very impressed.
Right. Yeah.
OK, this is this is this is not an easy.
This is the kind of road where it's not easy for humans to do this well, you know.
So while the remit for Johnny was to find some circumstances
where we thought would would be difficult.
Oh, oh, it just it's.
Oh, maybe it's all that person.
There's people in the road.
Oh, look at that. We did a little.
We had a little a little stutter.
The thing failed to take off twice.
And then we saw pedestrians and a dog and a dog coming around the corner.
So weird where I would see that.
It must have seen it from this camera.
Oh, actually, maybe the wide the wide front camera.
So look at this going up and up.
We're getting close to the Self Realization Fellowship
where in the kind of the bowels of my wash in here.
Great view. Yeah, it's awesome up there.
And some of the houses I went to.
I'll show you the house.
I went to a dinner party at this house.
Around the corner here.
This I'm just wildly impressed by it.
Well, it's my turn with humans on one side
and another car on the other and garbage cans.
Just drives it like I would have done it done it.
Right. Yeah, that's great.
See this wild house here, the blue one went to a dinner party.
There was such a nice house.
Absolutely incredible.
OK, got a pedestrian.
We got a weird one.
He calls it T intersection that does kind of a team, but also with a.
Yeah, maybe a mobile four way.
I was looking for some five way stops, some six way stops.
Any other weird situation?
So rack your brain as you talk Johnny for some other situations.
Well, we'll find out.
So we're almost there.
This is this is Mount Washington Elementary School.
So where I taught my son to ride a bike in that parking lot.
Wow. Well, those are all the kids clothing that they might.
We do that. My kids school does the same thing.
They put all the clothes on the outside.
You know, so.
But yeah, it is beautiful up here.
This is a weird part of LA where like you're just so isolated
and so peaceful and quiet and miss living here.
Not super handy if you want to get.
No, no.
And what's your nearest grocery store?
I always called this like the hipster retirement community.
There was like a super rate down at the bottom.
But yeah, it wasn't it wasn't great for that kind of thing.
It's it's changing.
They're it's changing.
But there it is.
There's Trader Joe's.
I don't go to Trader Joe's.
They have horrible parking lots.
That's what you do is do full self driving parking lot.
Trader Joe's.
Well, this lady's going to come right out.
Yeah. No.
Oh, look at that giant truck doesn't even care.
And look, here we are.
Self realization fellowship.
Sweet. Is this is this a cult?
I looked it up on Colt Watch and it said it's the most
benign cult in America.
And so the security guys just wave at us.
Give me the peace sign.
It's right.
And yeah, so they have a they have some kind of leader that people love.
Love is a very nice way to put it.
It's beautiful. What a view.
Yeah, is this incredible?
The tennis court or some kind of court?
Yeah, it probably was when it was a hotel.
OK, so successful FSD, full self driving.
That's amazing.
This is a self realization center.
Yeah. So, you know, this is one of those like now we're doing the world's
tight and we're doing like an Austin Powers three point turn
in the middle of a very tight road.
I don't know why this is crazy.
I think it's trying to pull us up onto the curb.
Yeah, I think it's trying to park us right in front of the place.
And that's that's another neat thing is you can say park curbside
curbside and it will do it.
And I think it's another break.
So now it's parking us in front of this bench.
All right, sweet. All right.
What a what a view.
I hope the camera there's no way to get that.
But there's downtown LA.
But look at this. I mean, it's so beautiful here.
But yeah, this this used to be a hotel.
Great. Yeah.
And then in the 60s during all the guru stuff.
Yeah. All right.
Where do you want to go now?
Let's go. I want to go to I want to get back on the freeway via one of the craziest things.
So we're going to go to a restaurant called the Herman, OK,
which you have to exit via Marisol. Perfect.
And then we have to get back on the freeway to Pasadena.
I lived on 200 Monterey Road.
Oh, yeah, that's Pasadena.
Right around the corner from the first senior fish.
No, you just do recs.
Let's do regular. OK.
Let's go to a restaurant called the Herman in Herman.
Calculating.
And 10 minutes away.
All right. What do I hit?
It. Yep. And this hit go.
Great.
Should be good.
Oh, you have to put your put your foot on the break.
And then. Oh, there's something in our path.
It's noting. I don't know what it is.
There's nothing. Put it into drive.
OK. OK.
OK, let's give it a that.
OK. OK.
Are we in drive? Yeah.
All right. And then. Yeah.
Start. Start. Start self driving.
Oh, start self driving.
Release pedal. Wow. OK.
There you go.
All right.
See, so just drive.
Just drive for a little bit and then keep on.
Is it going now?
Are you driving or are you still driving?
It's. It thinks it's something.
Oh, really? I figured it out.
All right. I wonder what I thought I was in our way.
There's nothing. So I don't know.
All right. So.
Bye. Bye self realization.
Small, tiny error.
And now we're getting back to no realization.
OK.
So here's some other things.
Oh, look, you wait again.
Wait again. So friendly.
So here's another thing.
Here's a feature that I don't think I talked about with Frank,
but I really like about FSD.
It is.
Oh, this is this is good.
This is this is good.
OK, great. This is a crazy.
Bombing on the hill. Yeah.
So we just made a we are left into an on a narrow
two way road with no lines.
And there was no site.
You can't see what's going on.
Corner and no lines anywhere.
There's no there are no lines on the edges of the roadway
and there's no center line.
And the width of the road changes constantly.
There's a very old road.
Again, this was built in like 1914.
Right. This was great up here.
Oh, yeah. It's so cool.
Here comes a car.
Here comes a car.
Oh, let's see. Let's see if it does it.
No biggie. No.
That's amazing.
Yeah. You get to go down here.
This is like the one of the wildest roads.
You if you want to go down there, just take the wheel
and then hit FSD afterwards.
You want to send it down this road?
Yeah, just just so crazy.
OK, great. So taking the wheel.
Taking a hard right off the nav.
OK, this is a wild street.
Imagine we crash.
And then hit start self-driving.
And then it's going to take over.
It's going to be like, what the hell did you just do?
Yeah, that's OK.
That's fine. Oh, yeah. This is great.
Yeah.
And the front camera is going to capture
how narrow this thing is.
This is literally.
This is a one-laner.
This is a one-laner.
So it has storm damage.
Look, there's sandbags there.
If we come across a car coming up the other way,
it'll see what happens.
Actually, we'll see.
It stumbled.
It saw some mustard plants.
I think it saw some mustard plants.
Yeah, vegetation on the side.
Yeah.
But this is what I wanted to get out of Mount Washington.
OK.
This is amazing, frankly.
This is one that humans have a lot of trouble on this road.
All right, here's a car.
Yeah, parked cars, a little house.
I'm actually living down here.
Oh, I did show you a way, so.
Like here?
Like, kind of like this.
Yeah, not far from here.
OK.
So I was interrupted.
One of the things I really like is, and well,
Here comes a car.
When you come across stop signs.
Oh, this is great.
It's a giant van, narrow.
Oh, it stumbled a little, but it got it.
Oh, it freaked itself out and stopped.
Oh, no, it's waiting for this.
I think it's waiting to see what this.
Oh, but look, and there's a pile of rocks.
Is that a pile of rocks?
It's going to pull over.
It's going to let this camry go through.
Yeah.
That's mildly annoyed.
And it was amazing.
Hang on real quick.
There was like a dozen rocks kind of like in the road,
and it avoided them.
Well, basically pulled right next to them to park,
to let the camry through.
That was great.
We couldn't have scripted that any better.
That is, I'm so impressed.
This is like a Disneyland ride.
Yeah.
Like, look, all the bridges collapsing.
And so, again, this is a never ending series of S.
It's kind of, yeah, it's freaking itself out.
It's freaking itself out.
But it's a never ending series of S turns down a big mountain.
And it's shadowed.
The road is changing width.
There's all kinds of water damage.
We got no light.
Overgrown vegetation.
We got no radar.
Yeah, there's a bunch of little branches hanging out
in the roadway, taking up at least 18 inches.
This is impressive.
Super blind corners.
This is nuts.
Yeah, here's a parked car.
Brant's freaking out.
You can't hear him.
He's like, I got two parked cars.
You got kids at home?
Yeah, it's having a hard time.
It doesn't like, OK, so I can tell you why.
It's making a three point turn.
Part of it is the angle of the sun.
I think it confuses.
This is where you want Lidar.
What's it doing?
What's it doing?
Ooh, it's backing up.
It's backing up for no reason.
This is really weird.
This is so strange.
I was going to go out.
OK, all right, hey, I'll forgive that.
I'll forgive that.
The car behind, if we had a car behind us.
Oh, yeah, it would have been bad.
Would not have figured it out.
Yeah, we had a way more moment.
But look, like here, like somebody obviously drove off
the edge there, like sandbags.
It's a good challenge.
Good challenge, Johnny.
Yeah.
This is a good idea.
Who said, Brian said Mount Washington?
Yes.
Props to Brian, because this is a look.
What's it going to do?
What's it going to do?
Do we want to go this way?
I don't know.
I have no idea where it's going.
Why is it doing this?
Do another three point turn.
I think this is great.
You know, I had, I did have it freak out once
when I was driving in the mountains.
Hey, can I say something to the Tesla bros?
What is going on here?
Oh, I think there's a person.
There's no, there's no person.
Maybe it's he's a ghost.
Oh, it's seeing the ghost of Mount Washington.
But why are we?
I don't know.
OK, now we're backing up and we're going back up quickly.
So creepy backseat guys, freaking.
It wants to go back up the hill.
It's freaking out.
Now we're going back up the hill.
Maybe it wants to go back up the hill.
I don't know.
It's self-driving.
It's seeing ghosts.
It's seeing people.
Now it's doing it.
This is wild.
What is happening?
Now, for people who listen to the radio,
there is no reason to be doing any of this.
There are no people.
It's actually very clear.
Super empty road.
Yeah, there's no lane markings at all.
But it's it's now made.
This is third three-point turn for no reason.
Fred's dying.
Would you be a professional?
That was amazing.
All right.
OK, but it figured it out.
It figured it out.
Is there a lack of service?
Let me see.
Is there a lack of cell service?
There's not great cell service.
But it's using cameras.
It's using cameras.
OK.
I mean, look, dude, you've got a cool RV back there.
Yeah.
OK.
Yeah.
So this is this is totally nuts.
But I mean, again, like this is what we want to do.
This is like an edge case torture test.
This has if you think about, you know,
when you talk to autonomous people and they're like,
it's got to have like, you know, lane markings
and it's got to be mapped.
Like this has never been mapped.
No one.
Look, we're in the middle of LA.
No one knows.
It comes proposing traffic.
Yeah.
Not a big deal.
Awesome.
And again, you can see like these are like cabins
because these were summer homes back in the teens.
This is so cool.
I have so cool to live down here.
Yeah.
I was very close.
Are these expensive?
They are now.
And also I lived in like a one room shack.
We called it the tree house.
It was like a one room shack up 64 stairs.
This is the.
But it was rad.
This is the home you took your your bride to.
When so I used to I lived here in another house
on a street called Beauvais corner of Beauvais and Rainbow
and giving pizza guys the word Beauvais was back before.
Right.
When you had to actually say, where do you live?
Blah, blah, blah, Beauvais.
It's spelled like Beavis.
Anyways, I was living there.
My friend who owned the place decided
to go back to Virginia to go to law school.
So I just started dating my wife and I'm like,
I'm getting kicked out.
She's like, let's just move in together.
Oh, nice.
Yeah.
That was like 18 years ago.
So far so good.
2007, yeah.
19.
Jesus.
OK.
OK, so let me go back to what I was saying before we
had that awesome little roller coaster.
One thing I like about this system
is that I actually think no matter what mode you're in,
it still takes too long at stop signs.
It does take.
I was going to say, one thing I think is lacking.
Right.
I'm a California roll guy.
This thing feels like definitely one second, maybe
one and a half, maybe two seconds.
By the way, I used to live there.
Oh, nice.
Yeah.
OK.
Up in Hilo.
So here we come up with stop sign.
If you don't like how fast, how long it's possible.
Teach me.
Just hit the gas.
That's the coolest thing.
No way.
That's awesome.
Well, I didn't mean to actually blow the stop sign.
Whatever.
Arm and stop.
Whatever.
And then it'll go through.
Now, if you do that too often.
OK.
Or if you do that.
Does it find you?
No, it tells you, hey, it will not
break while you're accelerating.
So you have to.
You actually will have to assume control.
It'll still steer.
That's fine.
But same thing.
If you come if you if we're going
to make this a left turn here.
Yeah.
And you think you can make it.
I can make it.
I'm not going to.
This is a biker.
Yeah, you could goose it.
And you go and it'll keep steering.
So what happened to everyone was Ed said that.
And we were kind of like 10 feet from the line
for where the stop is.
And I just kind of very lightly like 2% throttle.
And it just rolled right on through.
And Johnny didn't even bother to look to see it.
I did look.
No, I'm on camera.
You can't even say that.
I'm on camera looking.
All right.
So that's what I like.
Your honor.
This thing is whoever.
Well, I know who did.
Ashwak L.A. Swamy and they're the team behind this.
Go L.A. Swamy made it.
So there's no nothing fancy.
You just do what you would normally do, which is I don't
like what the system is doing.
Let me just give it a little bit of guidance here.
And you can.
It doesn't allow you to do with the steering.
Because once you assume control the steering wheel,
it'll kick you out of it completely.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Same with the brake.
But if you want to throttle it a little bit, have at it.
And that's how that's how smart cruise control systems work.
You can always accelerate.
And then it'll just kind of go back down to this beat.
Look, I've noticed.
I mean, back when do we have the Model 3 for the first time?
That was like 2015, 416?
Model 3?
No, 2017, 2018.
OK, I remember.
I think it was the Model 3.
It might have been the Model X.
But I had to go visit my mom.
It was in Thousand Oaks.
And Thousand Oaks has a lot of straight streets
where you can just perfect visibility of everything.
And so when you see a light turn red in front of you,
you have a quarter mile to take your foot off the throttle
and the thing just kind of coast down.
And I was using, I guess, autopilot at the time.
It was before full self-driving.
And it perfectly would stop.
But I noticed a lot of cars now, a decade later, can't do that.
They'll roll over the line.
They'll stop 10 feet behind the line.
But it was just perfect back then.
So in other words, where I would lift my foot to start
braking, it just mimics it perfectly.
OK, wait.
Here we go.
All right, so for those of you listening,
we have now crossed back over the 110.
We're about to get on the 110 north.
This is a gnarly one.
And this is what we're here for.
This is potentially dangerous.
Because again, we're about to accelerate.
We're at a stop sign on a freeway.
We have, I'm going to say, acceleration lane.
It's about 15 feet of acceleration.
And traffic is reasonable.
It's not.
I would have gone.
I would have gone right then.
I would have gone because that Jeep was had its turn signal.
We got a car behind us.
Oh, man.
Literally, there is no acceleration lane here.
This is so good.
It's an isosceles triangle.
I forgot about this one.
Maybe 150 feet.
OK, so go now.
Go, go, go.
It's doing it.
It's great.
Go, go, go.
But like freeway speeds.
Let's go.
Let's go.
That's full throttle, baby.
That's full throttle?
I think so.
I believe the world's slowest Tesla.
55.
Now we're at speed limit.
Now we're doing 60.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's pretty well.
So the point of this exercise is not just
to listen to Johnny laugh.
No, it is.
We're going to come back and do this in the CLA
when Mercedes system is on board.
And then when Rivians is on board, we do that.
And we're going to do it with everybody.
Can I make a prediction?
Yeah.
No one's going to do it that well.
That was so impressive.
So we have to remember this route.
Yeah.
Oh, easy.
Yeah.
And maybe we'll get more views from Mercedes
Vins and Rivian engineers.
When we wind up in the hospital.
So they know to plan for these kinds of like.
That, I mean, again, people don't know what I'm saying.
They're just going to be like, you did what?
But Avenue 43 North, I mean, it was about what?
15 feet of on-ramp.
Yes.
I mean, I said it was like a triangle and the peak of it.
I mean, and the lane is like, it's maybe 150 feet.
I think maybe because of the way the system works,
it was actually put itself at a weird disadvantage.
Because the way I would do that is I
would get on the freeway pointing in the direction
of traffic and use my mirrors.
This thing was basically at like perpendicular.
And then it had to have the steering all the way cranked
when it started accelerating.
I would have had it straight.
And this is something our Alex de Closa and Frank figured out
when they did the Waymo versus RoboTaxi test,
is that when you have cars that have cameras all over,
like the delay in your neck to looking in mirrors,
this thing sees everything.
So they were really surprised at how quickly,
like RoboTaxi was punching it to get on the roads.
Because it could see things.
And instead of even pausing to yield, it would just go.
Well, I know a little.
What can I say what I know?
I know a little bit about Waymo driver six or driver six,
whatever they're calling it.
And it's going to really start using the fact
that it can see in two directions at once.
So all right.
So we're basically at the Hermann,
which is a restaurant right here on Monterey.
So you used to live on Monterey.
Yeah, 200 Monterey Road in a little shack
that had very little insulation.
Well, why don't we do this?
Because I want to go eat in Pasadena.
Why don't we take Monterey up to your old house?
Actually, it would have been this way, I think.
Because this is South Pass.
South Pass is up there.
But that way.
Oh, OK.
This is this is a restaurant right here on Hermann.
But you said it's not.
It's not open for lunch.
Oh, yeah.
It's great.
All right.
Where do you want to go next?
And then how much, Brent, how much time do we have?
Oh, what do we have?
We're at 37, so like 35 minutes right now.
OK.
So we needed another 30 minutes.
OK.
Let's go.
Let's go, let's call it parked.
Let's go to Pasadena, yeah?
OK.
OK.
We probably have 30 more minutes on the battery.
Oh, great.
OK.
So let's do.
Navigate to Pasadena.
Yeah, well, I'm trying to think.
Turn on Simon.
Oh, let's say a little bit deeper in there.
Pasadena High School.
Or the Rose Bowl.
The Rose Bowl's got some.
The Rose Bowl's got some.
Oh, yeah, from here it'd be far.
OK, yeah, it's going to be OK.
Go to the Rose Bowl.
There we go.
Start self-driving.
Destination may be closed.
That's fine.
Oh, did you navigate?
You didn't navigate.
I just don't.
It's going, it's going, it's going.
No, it's not.
There's no route planned.
Oh, OK, yeah.
I got it.
No, no, you don't have to.
Oh.
It'll, that's a crazy thing.
It'll just drive.
Oh, I see.
OK.
Oh, that's fine.
Yeah, no destination.
No, we're not telling you.
OK.
Oh, come on.
Navigate to the Rose Bowl.
Oh, you have to say navigate.
That's what I do.
Great.
All right.
So we're in Herman.
My best friend lives in Herman.
Another.
Yeah, narrow, overgrown, old, old, choppy, strange angles.
Like the, you know, we're looking right now.
This is the horizon.
And then we're going to make a right.
We're going to make a right.
All right.
Make a right.
So you're a man of many experiences
in different car makers.
Yeah.
Now that you're suitably impressed
by a vision-only system, by a very controversial car
company.
Yeah.
I mean, Ford, Ford, I've asked this of different engineers.
Ford adopted NACS because they realized
it was a superior charging system.
And when they opened the door, GM followed,
then everybody else.
Everybody, yeah.
Right?
Almost.
I think I don't think, I can't think
of a major auto manufacturer that
hasn't adopted the North American Charging
Standard, which Tesla pioneered.
I think FSD, this vision-only system,
is really, really good.
I get that LiDAR and radar, but I
get that radar for sure and ultrasonic and inertial sensors
that these things that have been in cars
have a place, perhaps, and that maybe,
maybe not as much on LiDAR because the rollout for LiDAR
has been so long-promised and bumpy.
But I'm also thinking like, hey, if you're Mazda
or if you're Mitsubishi, if you're Ford
and you're building this ultimate EV platform
and you're building it right now, why not just say, hey,
you know what?
We were going to put cameras on the mirrors and on the nose.
Sweet.
Sorry.
Super rusty.
We're going to put cameras on the mirrors, on the nose.
It's good.
Let's just move the 5 or 11.
Everything's got 11 cameras.
Let's just move them to the same position that Tesla has
and license their system.
Like, why not?
Like, do you concur or are you like?
No, well, here's the thing.
I think when Tesla started this, LiDAR cost a lot of money.
I think LiDAR prices have come way, way down.
Now they say it's like $200.
And again, we're in early March.
It's beautiful, sunny, 73-degree day here in Los Angeles,
California.
We are not on the East Coast where they got hit by a frigging
blizzard where it's still like freezing cold.
There's no precipitation.
We're not at night.
So no, with my kid in the backseat, I want LiDAR.
I want radar.
I want what Mercedes does, honestly.
I want download maps.
I want the damn thing to have a map in its head.
Why not?
It's got the processing power.
Have a barometer.
So in case you accidentally get on an on-ramp that takes you up,
it knows it made a mistake instantly.
You know what I mean?
So that's what Mercedes is doing.
And I always say this.
Volvo came out and said, our motto, our company policy,
whatever it is, no one's going to die because of a Volvo.
Whereas Mercedes is, no one's going to die in a Mercedes.
That's what I want.
I don't want to hurt other people, but I also like the people
I love, let's protect them.
Well, I mean, I get the philosophical argument sort of.
I will say that.
This is crazy, though.
Just went over and flew over train tracks.
Totally wild.
It made this interesting left turn over.
Had to cross a tiny strip at WLO.
You know, in the episode we did with Frank,
we talked about how Frank is, his main criticism
is what you said, like cold weather, Michigan.
He's a Michigan engineer.
And a bunch of people chimed in in the comments on YouTube
and said, I have a Tesla.
I live in Michigan.
It works fine in all the weather.
And I think it's like what RJ and, what's the fish?
Yeah, from Rivian said.
They're like, yeah, you can drive great like this.
Most of the time it's that edge case.
It's that 1% of the time where that's the problem.
And I understand that, I believe in that.
And again, I don't think LiDAR is some huge crazy expense.
And why not have LiDAR LiDAR and cameras?
I just, I'm waiting for these cars that have it
to come out and decide whether they're better.
Well, we'll have to like, go to like,
Ariaplog in the dead of January during
Sweden in the dead of January to do winter testing.
I don't know.
I'm cool with that.
I don't know.
Well, let me ask you, have you noticed
a lack of ability at nighttime?
Does it seem to suffer at night?
The only thing I'll say recently,
and oh, we should say, because they just give an update.
We are currently just so I'm gonna impress you too.
We are 95% self-driving since version 14.2,
which we did in about late October.
That means of the 3,928 miles we've driven in this car,
3,749 of them have been FSD.
So I'm trying to keep that average as high as possible.
You know, he was shot up to Brian.
He just took this vehicle over the weekend to Reno
and back to go skiing and see his parents.
And I told him, he, because I had it at 97%
a long time ago when he gave it to me.
He returned it with 95.
I said, and then he returned to me with 94 once.
I said, you better get that thing back over 95%
and he did.
In fact, he showed me a picture where he had it over 96%.
But he's critical as am I about some of the route planning.
And I feel like in the latest update,
the route planning has gotten a little bit worse.
And I'm wondering whether there's something happening
on the backend where they're trying to take away
some of the processing power.
But like, I live right by my kid's elementary school
and the worst time of the day to go down that road,
which would be on my way to work was one way to get to work
would be during the school drop-off time.
And like every morning it tries to send me down the road
and every morning I grab the wheel and I tell it,
you used to take me down 21st Street,
just go down 21st Street.
It's faster.
It's shorter.
Why do you send me down by the school?
It's not learning for some reason.
This is the part that drives me nuts
because it used to do the route planning to my house
much better and lately it's gotten worse.
And I can't figure out what's,
nothing's changed where I live.
So in my mind, something's happening in whatever algorithm
or the neural network that they're using.
And I just like go revert back to two iterations.
And again, this is another problem I have with Tesla
is like, there's no one to talk to.
They're terrible at communicating.
So like, I don't know, maybe that's true.
Well, I mean, maybe it's something else.
Where, what will we do in another manufacturer?
We can ask them.
I can get into, if I wanted to right now.
Oh, you mean like a PR person?
I can get PR to get me in touch with an engineer.
Maybe.
Like easily, and you know,
or they would come back with an answer.
Tesla, you know.
You would ask on Star or something.
I mean, I suppose I could ask.
I haven't, well.
But who are you gonna ask?
I will say, look, this thing,
this vehicle does allow you to lodge a complaint
when you correct it.
So if you were to grab the wheel,
you saw it pop up, it said record.
Which I think is neat.
Although, candidly, I haven't seen any changes
since I've been wrong.
All these like, hey man, picture an app.
It's funny because Rivian has that feature too.
Like if you, if something goes wrong or whatever,
and it could be anything, you just like,
like you double click the hazard button
and it just sends a message to Rivian like,
hey, look at the data.
But I've never.
Like this was an exceptionally long stop, I thought.
Yeah, well this was a crazy like four-way.
That was a five-way, right?
One, no, four-way.
It was a four-way, but it was a weird four-way.
But yeah, we're basically on the Arroyo,
as we call it now, but we're kind of like
in South Pass and south of the road.
Nice homes out here.
Beautiful out here, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But also really hot in the summer.
So hot in the summer.
And bad air quality,
horrible, yeah.
Pasadena is a native word, a Tonga word for-
Smog.
Smog, you know, foggy mountain, I think.
So, yes.
But yeah, I'm so impressed, like, you know.
Not much more to say.
Yeah, it's just really, really impressive, yeah.
Well, so-
It really, really is.
This is where I have to caution against everyone,
say, well, you're a Tesla shill.
I'm like, I'm not, I feel like I'm pretty even-handed
about Tesla.
And that's why-
I mean, we could talk about, like, you know,
killing off the S and X and then, you know,
pivoting the robots, being idiotic.
Sure, okay.
But yeah, exactly.
Like, you know-
And also I know-
There's a lot of feelings about Elon, and I also-
Yeah, he sucks.
But you know, how much is he involved in this anymore
and the actual people that are doing it, right?
Sure, they're great.
So, to me, it is that the system is so-
It works so well.
It, and really the seamlessness of it.
Like, I didn't have to tell you too much
about how to engage it.
No.
And we've done no route plan.
We haven't had to type anything on the screen.
You hit the button-
That's incredible.
Hit the button, you hit one steering wheel button,
the right steering wheel button,
you tell it where you want to go.
You were using natural language,
or you were like saying,
go here, get me here, I want to go here, right?
I've been using more like navigate to-
I just, I know it has.
And then you hit the button, and then it's done.
Yeah, no, it's great.
And I'm loving Mad Max mode.
I'm going to actually gas my way through this stop sign,
because, oh, actually there's a lot of traffic here,
so we have to wait.
It is, it does, it takes way too long at stop signs.
Yeah, that's not good.
But, in fact, you can just gas through, it's fine.
I have, like, I don't think I've touched the steering wheel.
No, you haven't.
You know?
Oh, trying to leave the self-realization
when it was-
That was once, and then when we wanted to go that crazy route.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So-
But that was great.
Yeah, so there's not, you know, I don't know.
Philosophically, you are among the motor trend,
you know, editors that love driving.
Do you have a philosophical issue with-
God, I wish my cars could do this.
Oh, okay.
Because you also live in LA.
No, but like, I've said this,
like I really want hands off, eyes off.
I really want eyes off because, you know,
what's the one thing we can't do as auto journalists
is get a DUI, right?
That's it.
Now, what do I like to do when I go out to eat?
I like to drink wine.
And like, you know, it's always that point where it's like,
God, I had like a steak and like a,
split a bottle of wine, like, I don't want to drive.
You know what I mean?
So I just want the thing to like,
get me home safe, don't hurt anyone mode.
You know what I mean?
And that, I think-
If you are with your son, the cool thing is,
you could put him in the driver's seat.
And then hit FSD.
Yeah, absolutely.
The car would recognize that there's somebody in the car.
Yeah.
Doesn't recognize that he's not of age
and has a belt or a driver's license.
Let's see, I would want, I would want,
I would want, I would want Lidar and Radar for that.
Because he would know what to do.
He's getting to the age where he knows what to do.
Actually, he's been carting.
He's getting pretty good.
Oh, look at the suicide bridge.
Beautiful.
Oh, this is-
They put a really cool park here, by the way.
This bridge that we're passing under is,
what do you call it, the Marengo Street Bridge
or something?
We call it Suicide Bridge.
All right, that's terrible.
I'm not sure there's a better name for it.
But it's beautiful.
It runs right by the Huntington Hospital.
Gorgeous.
And it's the, this also is used in a lot of commercials
because it's old-timey.
It's got the cool-
Except-
Except what you should know is,
they put up these anti-suicide fences all over it.
Yeah, so that's super ugly.
Super ugly, but the other problem,
we should drive over it, but the other problem with it is,
it's pretty high, but it's not 100%.
And so, a lot of people just break their hips.
Oh boy.
Yeah, so that's why they did it.
Because so many people,
oh, look at this.
There's a palm tree.
Palm frond in the road.
Ah, just avoided it.
Yeah, that's cool.
Yeah, we're in the Royal Great Hiking.
Another cool, here's the Rose Bowl.
Boom, there it is.
The biggest joke in Southern California history
is that UCLA will no longer play at this stadium
because they decided to move to SoFi Stadium
for the luxury boxes.
So now I'm a USC guy.
The only place to play is the Coliseum.
In my book, I can't argue that.
Can't argue that.
I get it, it's sometimes beautiful
to get the San Gabriel Mountains in the background,
but this place is horrible to get to on game day.
Oh, for you.
Tailgating, well, for everybody goes to UCLA,
which is like the biggest joke.
Like nobody goes to the games.
Right, it is so crosstown.
Yeah, we're so far from Beverly Hills right now.
And everybody who lives in the area hates it
because during the season,
they just air B&B their house on game days.
Well, yeah, you don't know how bad,
okay, what's that street?
Right over there.
Flea market's good here, though.
Flea market trip.
Also, this is a great place.
Like we take the kid here to ride bikes around.
Yeah, it's flat, it's great.
Kid Space Museum is really cool around here too.
Yep, a pipi pipi pipi.
Lots of cool stuff to do.
Okay, so we're at the Rose Bowl.
No major issues.
Yeah, let's eat.
I was like, why is it stopping?
Why?
Because I'm not making a decision at all.
To a try, this dude's gonna make a left.
Wow, it's good.
There's a guy walking, there's a scooter.
Is that an ID.4 that I take one?
How's it take one?
You know what's nice is it doesn't assume
there's a stop sign there.
Somebody, I guess it's C.
I would have.
I would have assumed that too.
I would have been hit twice.
Yeah, same, absolutely same.
Okay.
I mean, every podcast should be done in the car.
I think so.
Save some cash on studio, yeah.
Oh, we love you Kenyan.
You know, you're not listening to us.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But let's go get a Pasadena proper and get some lunch.
Okay.
The place is called Agnes.
It's fine.
I think it's called Agnes.
Yeah, they have good, it's like salads and cheese
and stuff like that.
What was that statue?
It's like Gary Beben.
UCLA's only husband and trophy winner.
That's, he has eight.
Wow.
Eight.
It's not like I play, right?
You did, yeah.
The big family here.
This is great though.
Is this, I wonder where it's taking us to?
I don't know, but let's read, let's reroute.
Okay.
So.
There's a restaurant called Agnes in Pasadena.
Take us there.
Yeah, it does not understand what you're coming to say.
Navigate to.
I'm gonna do Grock.
Yeah, hang on a second.
Go to a restaurant in Pasadena called Agnes in Park.
Oh, look what it's done.
Uh-oh.
This is a dead end.
Let's see if we can, oh, okay, hang on.
Better see those posts.
So weirdly, it, I don't think there's no way for it to know,
but it took us down a road where there's a bunch
of metal posts blocking us.
Now it's backing up.
This is illegal and there's a car coming at us.
It's trying to, oh, what is it doing?
All right, I'm gonna take over.
Well, how's it going?
There's a car behind us.
Well, this car's gonna see what he does.
All right, so.
This is, he's gonna think I'm drunk.
What is it doing?
And you're oddly not.
I think it's gonna, I think it's trying
to make a three point turn.
Yeah.
All right.
So it is, all right, we're, yeah,
we got a three point turn going.
You didn't touch a wheel.
I didn't do anything.
Oh, keep going.
Keep going, back up more.
No, no, I think he's trying to stay within the lane.
He's got a car.
Yeah.
All right.
All right, hey.
Okay.
It's a very bad 17 point turn it made.
But it did it.
It did it.
It was very, what's he gonna do?
Very poorly done.
He's gonna fit out that hole.
He, I, he, I rolled this.
He works here.
He, I rolled this really hard.
Yeah.
I would have, I ride a roll like this.
That was horrible.
That's fine.
Hey, so we found Agnes.
Cool.
Let's go.
In six minutes.
It's perfect timing.
Is that perfect timing, producer Brent?
Yes.
Okay.
All right.
Look, door open, guy getting out.
Throws a signal, crosses over the double yellow.
Nice.
Double deal.
Nice.
This man looks actually quite chill.
I'd be surprised.
I'm actually a little surprised.
It's not going a little faster.
You reduce it in the soundproof thing?
Could be.
Dude's doing jump rope.
Maybe it knows it's on camera.
So it doesn't wanna do anything like weird, you know?
Do you know Grock?
Do you know?
Grock's not knowing.
Could you do that thing where you ask,
like could Elon Musk beat up Godzilla?
And it starts saying yes.
You seen that?
No, but you can ask Grock a bunch of stuff.
It's like who would win in a street fight?
Mike Tyson or Elon Musk?
And it's like, oh, Elon Musk grew up fighting
in the streets of South Africa.
Like, you know, Mike Tyson's old.
And so Elon Musk would win that.
It's really ridiculous.
Wow.
All right, so this is, these posts are very interesting.
Yeah, I don't know why they're there.
Must be some.
All right, so we're back on the other side of this.
Okay.
This is a wild intersection, actually.
Yeah, this is like a two lane,
two lanes in each direction, plus stop signs.
Plus all kinds of pedestrian and bike traffic.
And this is cool.
So it's taking us out the back way.
Okay, I wouldn't have gone this way, interesting.
Yeah, that's the other thing I like about FSD.
It's actually revealed a couple of different ways
to my house, which I hadn't thought of.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
So the navigation is generally pretty good.
It's an interesting building.
That is, I think the Swimson.
I don't know, it's, yeah, it's the back of the pool, I think.
Okay, this lady waved at us.
Okay.
She's the free runner over.
Oh, she's from Pallas Ferri.
She got the old Portuguese Bend sweatshirt on.
So that's the part of the Pallas Ferri's Peninsula
that is sliding into the ocean.
No, that was it.
It's slamming on the brakes for no reason.
That was it, yeah.
My feet are flat on the floor.
I gotta say, man, I'm impressed.
Right, so this is the thing that I'd now
talk to every engineer about.
Like, hey, you spent much time FSDing.
And they should.
Yeah, so.
Yeah, the rest of the industry,
I mean, the gap between what this is capable of
and like what other cars can do
is where Tesla was with EVs in 2016
and where the rest of the industry was in 2016.
They caught up, took them a decade, right?
Like, there's lots of EVs now that are, you know,
as good or better than what Tesla puts out.
But this full self-driving is so much better.
Like, you, because you get a lot of cars now.
I would say most of them, premium or luxury,
you spend a lot of time in Mercedes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Definitely give theirs shot, there's a shot,
although the major update is CLA and then S-Class
with the latest version of a drive pilot.
But that's like level three.
That's like actual eyes off.
I look back to the future in house, Gamble house.
I'm interested, yes, that is.
That's Doc Brown's house from back to the future right there.
Oh man, Mac and Cheese Rebel, next to it.
I'm more interested in the, this, this,
the street driving, point to point, which, you know,
hands off, you know, eyes on, it's fine.
Yes, fine. We'll test.
We'll test. Can I start, like, how, how,
if I start texting? You should try that, okay.
And what'll happen? I was curious about something.
So yeah, it'll start to give you a visual alert here
on the screen, it'll flash in blue to take the wheel,
but sometimes it takes kind of a long time.
Let's see.
So it's announced it's pay attention to the road.
Okay.
See, now it's flashing blue.
Oh, it went away because it saw you.
I moved the camera out of the way, yeah.
So.
All right, now that works.
And then if you wait, if you ignore it, it will venture,
it'll actually tell you to touch the wheel
or grab the wheel in some cases.
And then if you really ignore it, it'll shut the whole thing
out. Ooh, that dude just turned right in front of us.
Yeah.
And it caught it mildly.
It caught it mildly, yeah, that's nice.
Did not slam.
No crazy alert, no, like, do, do, do, do, do.
This little, I don't think it'll be a challenge
for the system, but this is a two-way street
that turns into a one-way street
when you cross the freeway.
And then we want to park in the parking,
is there parking lot or is there street parking?
There's a parking lot across from it.
See if we can find it.
Great.
Wow.
Actually, I think by the time we get there,
oh, this is great.
Bus, bus, bus.
Bus from Mad Max.
Okay, so there was a bus.
But that's exactly what I would have done.
Okay, there was a bus in our lane with its hazards on
and it was on the curb, but it's a wide bus.
And then there was a ram, was this a 15-100?
Yeah, big, big ram.
Ram 1500 in the lane next to us and the light was green
and the ram took off and we passed it
and slightly nudged it.
We didn't go over it in the lane, did we?
Yeah, a little bit.
We nudged over a little bit to clear the bus.
But that's exactly what I would have,
exactly what I would have done.
It would have done what an aggressive driver would have done.
That's great.
And it takes off from green lights rather well.
That's how I would have taken off from a green light.
Good reflexes.
Yeah, super impressed.
So, too bad it feels like you've done 180,000 miles
on those rear shocks.
Yeah, the ride, you know, the noise in the back,
the ride in the back of this car is pretty atrocious.
I've made a million of them, yeah.
It's a very common Uber.
Front, it's fine.
Oh, no, this is interesting.
So, the restaurant is on that side of the street.
Oh, that was the right turn.
So, the parking lot's actually on the other side
of the street, the closest parking lot to this place.
So, let's see if we can figure it out.
Well, it just went from a two-way to a one-way street
and it has no problem with that.
And there is the very first Bucca di Beppo
I've ever eaten at.
Gross, that's the only one I've ever eaten at, it's so gross.
And I remember I ordered the chicken dish,
the chicken and tomatoes.
And they gave you 18 tons of chicken, man.
Yes, yes, so gross.
And the chicken breast is really dry.
Yeah.
So, the parking lot is here.
Man, I've been in this part of town a long time.
Here's the parking lot and it went right past it.
All right, well, all right, well.
Oh, it's going to this parking lot.
No?
It's going to this parking lot.
Okay.
Oh.
Oh.
All right, so it doesn't know that the structure is,
you can't park here.
It's all right, don't worry, we're good.
Okay, so let's see what happens.
Okay, oh, it's parked.
All right, it illegally parked us.
It illegally parked us?
No, it illegally parked us.
All right, that's a good way to end it.
So it's not perfect.
It's not perfect.
This actually happened with the Frank episode too.
But that was pretty good.
We tried, we tried to get it to pull into the chart.
Oh, I got it, I got it, I got it.
There's a person.
Yep.
She's waving at me.
She waved you like.
I got it.
Little Pasadena.
Okay, but that was, it found a parking spot,
totally illegal parking spot.
It's great.
It just made a bad choice.
Right.
All right.
Okay.
So are you gonna try to pull in there, you think, or?
Is this public parking?
No, this is authorized parking.
Oh, that's right, okay.
Um, let me see, I don't know why.
So he is a grandpa?
Yeah.
All right.
Yeah.
So Johnny's taking the wheel.
We had a comedic incident at the end here.
He's gonna curb the crap out of the Frank.
What?
No, it's a traveling.
It's not the most.
I'm gonna go around the block and park, but yeah.
Actually, can I just illegally?
No, dude.
Oh, he's fine, he's fine.
I can go around the camera.
All right.
So I think that's it.
This was a successful test of FSD.
We inadvertently found some very challenging
traffic conditions on the Mount Washington area.
No, that was advertently.
We did that on purpose.
Intentionally, thank you to Brian Vance
for suggesting Mount Washington.
That's a great suggestion.
Sounds some very twisty spots.
And we will remember and bookmark this route
so that we can do it again with the next.
Dude, this thing drives horrible.
Yes.
What a piece of junk.
All the more reason to use FSD.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
As a passenger in the front seat, it was great.
But that was like, what is this?
Whoa.
All right.
But they've replaced this car.
That's not fair.
Yes, it's the Juniper.
And wow, this is like, oh, we should try this.
Because this dude, this truck,
they've taken up the entire turn lane there.
But, all right, sign off.
Yeah, okay.
Bye, catch you next time.
See you in the next episode.
Thanks for watching and listening.
Sorry if it was a little chaotic,
but hopefully entertaining.
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