Elon Musk is on a roll. First, his became the most valuable car manufacturer in the world a couple of weeks ago, supplanting Toyota on the way to the top. And now, he’s here to save the day once more, giving customers the chance to get his basic Autopilot feature as an in-app purchase for a reasonable $2,000 until July 1.
So what the hell is Autopilot?
In a nutshell, it’s an advanced driver assistance system built to enhance safety and convenience on the drive. It’s supposed to reduce your overall workload as a driver (only Elon thinks driving’s work), so you can sit back and absorb another audio book instead.
To be fair, it’s got 8 external cameras, a radar, 12 ultrasonic sensors and a powerful onboard computer. If you got all this in your ride, you definitely can’t make the excuse of missing exits or not changing lanes in time. Amateurs.
Full Self-Driving Capability (FSD)
Okay, so maybe you’ve been listening to those audiobooks and come across Deepak Chopra’s law of least effort (smh). There’s an answer for that too. You can go one above the Autopilot feature and benefit from Autopilot 2.0, or what Tesla calls Full Self-Driving Capability.
It does exactly what it says on the box. From automatically engaging the turn signal and taking the correct exit, to automatically changing adjacent lanes, it’s a massive step towards complete cartonomy (car + autonomy #dadjokes).
Make no mistake, these features are only available to ‘attentive’ drivers, so if you thought you could get away with a nap behind the wheel, think again. Although, it’s only a matter of time before Tesla introduces ‘nap’ mode to cater for this.
Back to Autopilot
If you don’t want to go all out and save something for the kids, then hold onto that $7,000 (current price of FSD at time of writing this piece).
Consider the basic Autopilot instead. It’s got two main functions: Traffic-Aware Cruise Control which basically matches your car’s speed to the surrounding traffic, and Autosteer that uses the Traffic-Aware Cruise Control to help you steer within a clearly marked lane (this is a no go if you live somewhere without lanes).
So maybe it won’t do ALL the work for you, but you’re getting a decent bite out of it, and it’s all yours for around a third of the price of the FSD at $2,000.
Our take on it
Honestly, autonomous cars seem to be the way of the future. Ain’t nobody got time to change gears anymore, ey? So if you’re going to jump onto that bandwagon, might as well do it now, especially if it’s offered to you at a discount.
As a whole, and if you’re really asking, you can take that $2,000 and get some dope mods for your fuel-driven car. We can get you to the right place if you’re interested, just hover over to our page.
Alternatively, you could also put that money towards getting another second-hand car, which you can then tune up and enjoy what little sanctity there is left in the world of gear shifts and rear-view mirrors.
