Gadgetory

so most of you guys know I Drive a manual Toyota Tacoma I have four years my last truck was a manual this truck is a manual I don't drive an automatic vehicle because I like being in control well this is a Tesla and it has something called autopilot which means it basically drives for you one of the questions I've had in my head is can you text and drive a Tesla at the same time while it's doing its autopilot thing because it's actually illegal in 47 states to text and drive at the same time but what if you're not technically driving there's only one way to find out we're in the middle of nowhere right now on a very secluded road where it should be safe to do this let's get started alright so this is the Model X there is a total of eight cameras surrounding this thing we're gonna see if we can find them all I know up here by the rearview mirror there are three cameras one pointing straight forward and two at a diagonal I believe then there's another camera right here up here by the driver's seat just kind of like points down to the road to find the lanes that you're in there's also a series of ultrasonic sensors which are these little bits right here I assume they're plastic here by the passenger side window we have another camera and there's a camera right here on the side pointing back towards the lane so that should be all of the cameras and the ultrasonic sensors there's another four sensors on the front as well here and they're same on the other side so all of those sensors and radar which i think is behind the rear view mirror as well it could be similar different that's just where it's out of my coma I should be able to keep us safe while we're driving I just put my foot on the brake oh and the door closes alright so we are currently inside the Model X and it has this huge dash right here with the display got the testing logo so Dan how do we turn on the autopilot okay so first of all you need to be driving the car is always looking and it's showing you up here in the front it has to see the lines on the road and see it long enough to recognize that okay this is a road we can drive I can look at this and then it's always looking at the other cars so once it pops up and you're in a place where it's legitimately a safe or a good place for you to do it then there will be a little gray steering wheel that will pop up right here and then you know you're ready to enable it and at that point there's a little lever on the side you just have to pull back on it two times and you'll be good to go all right so right now our route is programmed for CES because that's where we're headed we're headed to a hi-tech conference in a high-tech car pretty stoked about that so I am going to switch us down into drive there is no key for like you know ignition for this car because there's no combustion engine it's just like an electric engine underneath and so the car is ready to go right now and it's so weird to me because there's like no explosions happening under the hood or under the bonnet if you're on the other side of the ocean and so we're gonna go ahead and merge over into this Lane we're on the road and the computer right now if you can show the dashboard right here it's showing us that we can see the lanes that were in it shows either side of it and it can say like if I emerge over a little bit to the side over here it shows me at the edge of the lane or if I get on the other side it'll move over to that side of the lane so it's keeping track with all of those cameras around the outside of the vehicle where we are located in the lane itself okay one thing that is super important is that there does have to be lions on the road for the autopilot to work and so if we want to show the road right now we can see that there's lions on this newly paved road so we should be fine and then here on the dashboard we have this grey steering wheel icon which means that we are enabled and ready to go into autopilot the icons this little guy right here so in order to get on autopilot I'm going to pull in so it's not these top two shifters but there's a shifter underneath and I'm gonna pull it twice and I'll hear this little ding and then the steering wheel starts moving by itself it's the strangest thing and so right now it's set it shows me the speed limit so the speed limit shows up right here and my max is one mile an hour above the speed limit I'll drop that down one more and so there's blue steering wheel right here shows us that we're in autopilot and it shows us where in the lane we currently are and the cars driving completely by itself like it just took a turn in the car and I didn't touch a thing so when I turn on the autopilot on this vehicle there is little warning message that pops up telling me to keep my hands close to the steering wheel at all times because remember autopilot is different than autonomous driving and I do have to be ready to take over just in case anything goes wrong remember full autonomous driving has not been approved yet in the United States and that's why the hardware is ready inside of the Tesla's but it's not enabled yet so every now and then this will pop up a little warning telling me that I have to it like hold on to the steering wheel in order for it to continue taking us to our destination or where we have planned to go and so while I can look at you and talk to you and the cars gonna do all the turning and braking and like if another car merges into our lane is going to stop it's still going to make sure that I'm awake and that I'm attentive by having me see right here it says hold the steering wheel and the outside of this frame has started to flash a little bit so I'm gonna grab the steering wheel with my hands and then that warning sign goes away and then it goes back to autonomous driving so I am looking forward to the fully autonomous driving in the future this autopilot is a step in that direction my question is what happens when someone gets too comfortable on this autopilot so right now that warning message just popped up on the steering wheel saying I have to grab the steering wheel to show that I'm attentive I'm not texting I'm not you know watching a movie or something like that so we're gonna see how long it takes for the car to actually stop we just heard a beep and it doesn't know if I'm asleep it doesn't know if I'm texting it doesn't know if I'm talking to a YouTube camera so it just beeped again so if I was falling asleep I probably would be awake by now and I could show that I'm unavailable for the rest of the drive and it stops in the middle of the ride so there's a car coming so I'm gonna move our car really quick it just said press the accelerator pedal everything turned off as soon as I accelerated and okay so now we're gonna pull over and assess what just happened here I've never done that in my Tesla and I was pretty nervous and I was surprised at how fast it was like that happened quick yeah like if we let's say I was having a heart attack or like some kind of medical emergency or something like that no I I kind of wish that would have pulled over the side of the road maybe with autopilot it doesn't know what Lane were in and so it just stopped in the side of the road turned on our flashers which is probably a good thing but that was really interesting it happened really quick what was that between the time that we know we started autopilot and I never touched the steering wheel it was probably within about 60 seconds that was interesting that was pretty quick that was a little scary I didn't expect it to stop in Miller Road like what if you are driving on the actual freeway we're on a safe road off in the middle of a not even a town we're in some farmland but what if you're on the freeway four-lane highway going 85 miles an hour to neut ah the speed limit is 80 on some of these roads and the car just stops and turn-ons on the flashers right in the middle road I guess it's safer than if you had a heart attack and the car just kept on going and veered off and stopped that's definitely one way to get your attention one thing that did freak me out a little bit and I hope that it you know doesn't mess up the car permanently it said that it was that feature was not gonna be available for the rest of the drive so I'm curious now that if we start the car up again that gray steering wheel which allows us to go into autopilot is not popping up so I wonder what that punishment period is I wonder how long that's gonna last well thanks to your little test Zac it's now like we have six and a half hours left el Vegas we're driving an autonomous car we can't even use autopilot the rest of the trip I win some you lose no we'll keep track of it we'll drive for another four or five hours and we'll see if that great steering wheel pops up and in the meantime I'm sorry Dan that your car is not autonomous anymore okay here's what I think is gonna happen I'm hoping we're about 15 minutes away from an actual super charging station so I'm hoping that if we sit in part for maybe 30 minutes get some electricity in this car maybe it'll count as a new session a new driving session once we get back on the road because 600 riving to Las Vegas to see us with no autopilot I know it's like firstworldproblems but I really like my autopilot nice you may have killed it I hope it comes back good news we made it to Las Vegas and even better news the autopilot started working thank you for not breaking it so we had to stop in charge like 15 or 20 minutes after we did our test and then we started the car again the autopilot was working and it worked for the rest of the trip we did not try to make the car break again but it was interesting to see the probation period between when we broke it and when it started working again it really wasn't much and I would think that Tesla would maybe punish you a little bit more because you got to think about it like you fell asleep where you're texting or just weren't paying attention it was like yelling out of beeping and shining lights at us but yet 20 minutes later 30 minutes later autopilot is engaged it'll be interesting to see what happens when the fully autonomous driving kicks in and what kind of stipulations there are with that technology when it's you know legal and implemented and everything the coolest part to me though about this road trip was that we didn't pay one single cent for gasoline that is really nice I mean those of you that are buying a Model 3 right now I know a lot of those are going out you have to pay for your super charging at all these stations always is still cheaper than gas but for the Model S and the Model X they have this referral program right now to where if you use somebody's code somebody that already has a Tesla then you get you're charging for free and that's only until I think January 31st and then Tesla will probably come out with another one but if you're thinking about getting a Tesla within the next few months now would probably be the time so that you can take advantage of that free super charging so I'm gonna still dance code and put it down in the description so if you're thinking about buying a Tesla for it's been on your mind and you want that free unlimited charging for life for life of the car yeah that you own it that goes down the description that's a pretty good deal so we're at Vegas and one of the coolest things that I'm looking forward to at CES is all of the electric cars there's one in particular tomorrow that is especially fascinating so stick around for that thanks a ton for watching and I'll see you guys around