Dialed number of all-electric Tesla Cybertrucks now have the ability to drive on US highways hands-free after the automaker released an update to the vehicles this morning. Tesla AI head Ashok Elluswamy wrote to X that the Cybertrucks will be the first Tesla vehicles to get the “end-to-end highway” driving feature, which the company says uses a “neural network” to navigate all parts of driving by highway.
“Nice job,” Tesla CEO (and X owner) Elon Musk replied to his AI boss.
Tesla owner’s manuals state that the Full Self-Driving, or “FSD (Supervised)” feature, should only be used if drivers are paying attention to the road. The feature reportedly shuts down if it detects that drivers are looking elsewhere. Critics say Tesla’s marketing incorrectly misleads drivers into believing that the FSD can actually drive itself and that the automaker has not been proactive in preventing driver abuse.
Customers who bought base model Cybertrucks early on pre-orders paid $7,000 to access the driving feature, with some waiting nearly a year for it to be available on their trucks. Tesla owners can now subscribe to the FSD (Supervised) feature for $99 per month.
One Cybertruck driver told X that based on driving this morning, the feature “works fine.”
The all-electric truck has also been subject to several safety recalls, including one in which the company had to repair or replace gas pedals that were stuck.
As more automakers rush into the electrification race and Tesla’s huge lead in electric cars is eroded by other manufacturers, Musk and company seem to believe that AI-enabled “self-driving” features will help Tesla regain its an advantage. “Tesla’s value is largely autonomy,” Musk told investors this summer.
America’s road safety regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, found that Tesla’s Autopilot feature, an older and less sophisticated version of FSD, did not sufficiently prevent drivers from abusing it – and was involved in 13 fatal crashes between 2018 and 2023 After years of investigating Autopilot, Tesla recalled 2 million Autopilot cars last year. (The automaker said it disagreed with the government’s conclusions.)
Earlier this year, Tesla settled a lawsuit filed by the family of a Northern California man who died while using Autopilot on his Model X.
Tesla is also facing a class-action lawsuit alleging it misled customers who bought Teslas after Musk promised the cars had everything they needed to drive autonomously. Eight years later, Tesla has made significant improvements to its driverless features and has plans to make big money from the feature, but it has yet to produce self-driving technology.
That could change this month. Musk has promised that Tesla will unveil a self-driving taxi called the Cybercab at an event in Southern California on October 10.
