{"id":109048,"date":"2026-01-22T21:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T21:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/109048\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T21:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T21:14:10","slug":"a-tesla-actually-drove-itself-from-los-angeles-to-new-york-exclusive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/109048\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tesla Actually Drove Itself from Los Angeles to New York: Exclusive"},"content":{"rendered":"

The biggest car news and reviews, no BS<\/p>\n

Our free daily newsletter sends the stories that really matter directly to you, every weekday.<\/p>\n

Nearly a decade ago, Elon Musk told the world<\/a> that a Tesla would complete a demonstration drive from Los Angeles to New York by the end of 2017. Suffice it to say, the year came and went and no such feat was accomplished, and the pledge was eventually buried by dozens more just like it. Well, it took nine years and change, but it finally happened: Minutes ago, a small team in a 2024 Tesla Model S just completed a trip from Los Angeles to New York City in what owner (and former The Drive contributor<\/a>) Alex Roy<\/a> is calling the first zero-intervention \u201cTesla FSD Cannonball Run<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

Roy\u2014a General Partner at NIVC<\/a>\u2014and his revolving team of co-drivers have been testing each successive iteration of FSD against Musk\u2019s 2016 claim using the famed route from midtown Manhattan in New York City to Redondo Beach in Los Angeles\u2014in reverse this time, simply because the car was already on the west coast. Along for the trip this time were Warren Ahner, an AI exec and former autonomy executive for a major automaker, and self-driving enthusiast Paul Pham<\/a>. Both are deeply knowledgeable about Tesla\u2019s Full-Self Driving suite and Roy stressed that he couldn\u2019t have completed the trip without them.<\/p>\n

After multiple detours (resulting from both human error and winter weather), the Model S completed the 3,081-mile trip entirely without human intervention. It took 58 hours and 22 minutes at an average speed of just 64 mph\u2014significantly off the pace compared to previous attempts. The car was running HW4 and FSD version 14.2.2.3, Roy told us, and the team spent 10 hours and 11 minutes of the trip just waiting for the car to charge. But in the end, they made it. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"Smooth going early on in Arizona (top left); The impending weather (top right); Roy and Pham in the 2024 Tesla Model S (bottom) Alex Roy <\/p>\n

Similar feats<\/a> have been accomplished before. If you\u2019re dialed into Tesla culture, you\u2019re probably aware that another transcontinental trip<\/a> was just completed a few weeks back. And while a coast-to-coast drive without intervention was indeed a documented first, Los Angeles to Myrtle Beach, Fl., is not the route that Elon promised. We can\u2019t fault Tesla owners for wanting to avoid the potential pitfalls of traveling to the northeast during the winter, but hey, what good is self-driving if it only works when conditions are perfect?<\/p>\n

Like Moss, Roy and his team were hands-off for the entirety of the trip, including charging stops. Every inch of driving was handled entirely by the car. The team was so committed to this, in fact, that one member was stranded at a western Pennsylvania rest stop while the others completed a 90-minute detour just to circle back around and pick him up without disengaging FSD. That\u2019s dedication. <\/p>\n

In total, there was only one disengagement on the entire trip, Roy told us, and it was his fault\u2014he accidentally touched the wheel. And lest you mistake this for some sort of \u201cgotcha\u201d moment, I\u2019ll remind you that Roy is no Tesla loyalist<\/a>. And you don\u2019t need to take his word for it either; he has the entire drive on camera\u2014two of them, in fact. Perhaps speaking to his former life as a journalist, Roy is big on documentation. <\/p>\n

Despite an active snowstorm in the Midwest (and the threat of further severe winter weather later in the week), Roy and the team set off from Redondo Beach Tuesday with the goal of reaching New York by Thursday morning. The Cannonball route follows I-10 from southern California into Arizona, then cuts north to grab I-40 toward Oklahoma City and eventually St. Louis (rather than a northern job through Kansas City, as shown in the older map below).<\/p>\n

\"1975 Alex Roy\/Cannonball Run<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Roy kept us updated throughout the journey. The route put the team at odds with an advancing Midwest storm system. The bulk of the action was north and south of their primary corridor for most of the drive, but they eventually tangled with snow squalls as they moved into the Northeast. The weather blew away any hope of the team arriving in NYC by early morning as planned, and several late-night texts revealed what might ordinarily be described as a white-knuckle drive, only nobody was holding the steering wheel.<\/p>\n

\u201cCRAZIEST events in snow \u2013 but FSD did it! Holy s**t,\u201d Roy said in one update. \u201cSnow performance and recovery is unreal,\u201d he later added. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe video will be crazy,\u201d Roy assured us. <\/p>\n

This was the team\u2019s first zero-intervention FSD Cannonball Run, but as long as there\u2019s room for improvement in Tesla\u2019s software, this certainly won\u2019t be its last.<\/p>\n

Got a news tip? Let us know at tips@thedrive.com!<\/p>\n

Byron is an editor at The Drive with a keen eye for infrastructure, sales and regulatory stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The biggest car news and reviews, no BS Our free daily newsletter sends the stories that really matter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[18548,9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-109048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-electric-vehicle","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}