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.
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.
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.