How Tesla's Self-Driving Autopilot Actually Works

(gentle techno music)

This is Tesla's Model S and we're gonna have a look at

how Autopilot actually works.

We'll do the hardware first while we're outside.

Underneath the plastic front bumper cover here

is a radar that can look forward

a range of several hundred meters so the car can tell

what's in front of it.

That data's combined with information

from these little dots, there are 12 of them

around the entire circumferance of the car.

They're ultrasonic sensors, so a much shorter range

but more of them.

Up here at the top of the windscreen is a camera

that's forward-facing and there's also

very high precision GPS, so the car's computer

knows exactly where it is all the time.

While we're still in park,

we can actually activate Autopilot, all the parts of it.

We go into settings here.

It's this control up at the top, Autosteer brackets beta.

I'm gonna press ON, just one of those ones

that you tend to gloss over,

Tesla really wants us to read this now.

It's saying, I will keep my hands on the wheel.

Do I want to enable Autosteer while it is in beta?

I'm gonna say, Yes and that's it.

That's on, lane-change is on.

We're ready to start our trip.

We're on the freeway here in Nevada,

so this is the type of situation where Autopilot should work

and so first, I'm gonna pull this lever towards me once.

That activates adaptive cruise control,

something that a lot of cars have these days.

I have it set at 70.

The truck in front of us is only doing

62 miles per hour right now,

so the car won't go any faster than that,

but if I manually change lanes

and we go around the truck,

take my foot back off the accelerator,

the car is now doing 70 and it will hold 70

unless there's something in front

that the radar senses that means that we have to slow down.

The second part of Autopilot is the Autosteer.

Now that, I have to pull the lever twice to activate.

There we go and it comes up with a little sign

that's saying, Please keep your hands on the wheel,

but I can just keep one hand on now

because I can see in the display here

that I have two lines highlighted in blue

that means the car is seeing

both lane-markings on either side.

If we were closer to that vehicle in front that's up there

then that would also be in blue, saying that the car

recognizes that it's there.

It's kind of locked onto it as a leading signal.

We can just cruise along like this.

I am supposed to keep hands on the wheel,

but you can see how relaxing it does feel.

It lulls you into this sense of security.

Another fun function of Autopilot,

I'm right now in the left-hand lane,

I should be in the right-hand lane.

I'm just gonna activate the signal

and then I'm actually gonna take my hands off the wheel

here altogether just to show you.

The car just moved across into the other lane.

Oh and there's even an exit there,

which it has managed not to send us down

and it's now centered us back into the right-hand lane.

Not entirely sure how useful that function is.

It's nice that it checks your blind spots for you

and that will perhaps get better over time with software.

Right now, I personally keep a very tight eye on the car

whenever it's changing lanes, just to make sure

it's doing it the way I want it to.

This is a great time to being using automatic.

We're in a line of very slow-moving traffic here,

although we're on a highway that's got a speed limit of 65,

which the camera has captured

and is showing me in front here.

So now you can see the speed is going up and down.

I actually don't have my feet on the pedals right now.

I will keep one hand on the steering wheel

because that's what we're supposed to do,

but the car is just speeding up and slowing down

as the car in front does.

In fact, the car in front is braking.

I'm not touching the pedals with my feet.

I just have one hand on the wheel.

The car is gonna slow down as that car slows down.

We would come to a complete stop

and then start moving again,

so in stop-and-go traffic,

it really takes some of the pressure off the driver.

One thing that it's not liking here,

if you can see outside the driver's window here,

we're in the left-hand lane and there's a concrete rail

that runs very, very close to the side of the lane

and Autopilot is displaying these yellow markings

in front of me, warning that there's something there,

something in my blind spot

that's kind of triggering it the whole time.

And if we were going any faster

than the 20 miles an hour or so we're crawling along at,

I'd probably be driving manually

just because I would feel more comfortable with that.

And one little Easter egg Tesla engineers have left us,

if you click six times on this lever,

you get the Rainbow Road from Mario Kart

and a little burst of more cowbells from SNL.

Apparently, favorites of Elon Musk.