Nearly a decade ago, Elon Musk told the world 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) Alex Roy is calling the first zero-intervention “Tesla FSD Cannonball Run.”
Roy—a General Partner at NIVC—and his revolving team of co-drivers have been testing each successive iteration of FSD against Musk’s 2016 claim using the famed route from midtown Manhattan in New York City to Redondo Beach in Los Angeles—in 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. Both are deeply knowledgeable about Tesla’s Full-Self Driving suite and Roy stressed that he couldn’t have completed the trip without them.
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—significantly 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.
Similar feats have been accomplished before. If you’re dialed into Tesla culture, you’re probably aware that another transcontinental trip 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, S.C, is not the route that Elon promised. We can’t 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?
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’s dedication.
In total, there was only one disengagement on the entire trip, Roy told us, and it was his fault—he accidentally touched the wheel. And lest you mistake this for some sort of “gotcha” moment, I’ll remind you that Roy is no Tesla loyalist. And you don’t need to take his word for it either; he has the entire drive on camera—two of them, in fact. Perhaps speaking to his former life as a journalist, Roy is big on documentation.
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).
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.
“CRAZIEST events in snow – but FSD did it! Holy s**t,” Roy said in one update. “Snow performance and recovery is unreal,” he later added.
“The video will be crazy,” Roy assured us.
This was the team’s first zero-intervention FSD Cannonball Run, but as long as there’s room for improvement in Tesla’s software, this certainly won’t be its last.
Got a news tip? Let us know at tips@thedrive.com!
