in 2019 Tree Weaves bought a Tesla Model 3 for use as our travel car. We have to take so many road trips around the US to get all these crazy tree net installations done, we thought it was a worthwhile investment to have a nice, safe, eco-friendly, easy to drive vehicle. We searched around for a while and ultimately came to the conclusion that the Tesla Model 3 was the only option. Here’s why:

• Autopilot

  • Autopilot is a game changer. At first we were a bit weary—can we really trust this computer, controlled by cameras and sensors, to keep the lane safely? After 27,000 miles of driving, the answer is yes. We use Tesla’s driver assist feature, known as Autopilot, about 95% of the time we are in the car.

• Fully Electric

  • Electric vehicles are vastly superior to gas vehicles in pretty much every single way. Cost, ease of driving, maintenance, environmental impact, and even convenience of filling up.

Autopilot

Autopilot is made up of a number of complex features which we will outline here. Hopefully this article can serve as a guide that can aide you if you should drive your friend’s Tesla, rent a Tesla, or just go for a test drive at your local Tesla Store. Autopilot features are broken into two categories: Autopilot, which is free and comes standard in every Tesla sold since 2017, and Full Self Driving (FSD), which is an add-on available when you buy your Tesla. The Autopilot that is included with every Tesla is quite impressive and definitely has more than enough features to make Tesla the most intelligent car on the market. The FSD add-on is basically a flourish that contains a number of cool features that make driving cooler and easier, but they don’t drastically change the driver experience. The promise with the FSD add-on is that you get every software update that makes Teslas more autonomous. Eventually, Tesla hopes to make cars like ours autonomous enough to drive completely by themselves, hopefully by 2021. The FSD package is a Beta version of that idea that gets a little bit better every few months with over the air (OTA) software updates. Since we bought our Model 3 with FSD in July of 2019, we’ve seen it get vastly more intelligent and have major improvements in its autopilot features.

• Autopilot (Comes Standard for free with every Tesla sold after 2017)

  • Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC)

    • Adaptive Cruise Control is a very nice feature. Other cars on the market have this feature, but it doesn’t work quite as seamlessly in Volvos, Toyotas, or the rest. The Tesla uses four forward facing cameras, a radar, and several sonar sensors to automatically detect any object in the Teslas path. When Adaptive Cruise Control is enabled, the Tesla will not crash into an object. When driving on the freeway, or even a city street, the Tesla automatically matches the speed of the car in front of you and adapts to their speed changes in real time, completely seamlessly. You set your max speed with a little dial on the steering wheel. You can also choose your following distance, measured in car-lengths between 1 and 7. When you’re cruising on the highway and another car cuts you off, the Tesla effortlessly reduces speed to go the exact same speed as the car that cut you off. You barely notice it at all. Gone are the days of cursing, turning off your cruise control and readjusting it to a new speed. When that car switches back into the right lane, the Tesla automatically resumes cruising at your desired speed with pretty strong, yet comfortable acceleration.

    • To enable Adaptive Cruise Control, you pull down on the drive lever once. When Adaptive Cruise Control is enabled, you are still responsible for steering the car. To disable ACC, push up on the drive lever, or tap the break.

    • ACC is a convenient feature for driving around in cities. I can exit the freeway, drive through a city and arrive at my destination a lot of the time without ever touching the break or the accelerator. It will automatically slow down for roundabouts and turns. As long as there is always a car in front of you at stop lights, the car will automatically stop and go, requiring no input from you besides steering. If you go through a stop sign, ACC must be disabled in order to stop. But I still find it remarkable how far I can drive through cities, making turns and slowing, stopping, and accelerating, all without ever using my feet.

    • You can also use ACC as a break in certain instances. There are times when I’m approaching a blockade of cars stopped at a stop light, and rather than time the stop out myself, I’ll just pull down on the drive level once and the car automatically pulls up behind the car in front of me very comfortably. Once you pull that lever down it feels like the car is magnetically repelled from objects in front of it.

    • Once on the freeway we had an emergency stop situation that caused 4 cars behind us and a semi to go off the road into the median. We let the Tesla do the stopping itself. It slammed on the breaks hard and came to a complete stop 3 feet behind the car in front of us (which has suddenly stopped). The reduction of speed from 60 to zero was powerful, but not dangerous. About a minute later the car in front of us resumed driving and our car just kept pace right behind, as if nothing had happened. The cars behind us were still trying to get back on the road. After that experience I will always trust the Tesla to come to a complete stop if it’s about to rear end a car.

  • Lane Keep Assist (Autosteer)

    • Lane Keep Assist, also known as Autosteer is where things start to get really scifi with the Tesla. This is where the Tesla completely drives itself and stays in its lane. The car is circled with cameras and long-range sonar sensors that give it a 360 degree picture of the world around. It also has a forward facing radar that can sense through other objects and goes pretty far ahead. It uses this hardware to get real time information about where the lanes are on any road that has lanes painted. It works in cities, highways, and freeways. It works best on freeways. The computer translates all the information using complex software and uses it to automatically steer. It will also reduce or increase speed in order to take curves.

      • Autosteer works almost completely flawlessly. It stays completely centered in the lanes at all times and does a fantastic job taking curbs. Occasionally on really curvy two lane mountain highways, it will take a curve too fast and drift out of the lane about a foot. For this reason I do not recommend using Autosteer through sharp curves or on super curvy roads. This technology is still very new and there is still always the possibility that the car will drive out of its lane or off the road. For this reason Tesla requires that drives watch the road and keep their hands on wheel at all times, even when autosteer is running. Every 30 seconds or so the Tesla will “nag” you to jiggle the steering wheel very lightly so that it knows you are still paying attention and able to take over at any moment in case of emergency. In practicality, this means that while driving, most of the time we relax our hands in our lap, but we have them available in case we need to take over. There have been unnumerable times when we have had to take over in an instant. In fact, I think that if we weren’t vigilant about paying full attention while autosteer is enabled, we would probably be dead right now. While it is an extremely cool and handy feature, do not get overconfident or complacent with this technology. Always know that you are still the driver and the responsibility to control the car is always in your hands. Autosteer does make it considerably safer to do things like change songs on your phone, put your sunglasses on, sip a drink, or grab something out of the back seat. A friend of mine recently had an accident that broke his neck because he had to reach down to put the aux cable back in the stereo; in a Tesla a simple task like that would not cause an accident.

• Full Self Driving (FSD)

  • Navigate on Autopilot — The majority of FSD features are currently bulked into one feature, called Navigate on Autopilot. When you have a destination in the GPS, there is a large blue button available for press on the screen that says “Navigate on Autopilot.” When Navigate on Autopilot is enabled the Tesla exercises the highest level of autonomy currently available with public software updates.

  • Summon

    • Smart Summon

    • Regular Summon

  • Enhanced Visualization

  • The future of FSD

How does Autopilot work? What hardware gives the Tesla its superpowers? Is most of the program based on hardware, software, or GPS?

Fully Electric

Other Notes

• Storage Space

  • Despite being a sedan, the Tesla Model 3 has a shockingly large amount of storage space.

    • The seats go completely flat, which allows you to sleep in the car, or put large items or bikes inside.

    • The front of the car, which would normally hold the engine, is home to a roomy “Frunk.” It’s basically just another, smaller trunk located in the front of the car that’s perfect for a couple bags.

    • The trunk itself has what we call the Under Trunk, which is just a large open space underneath the trunk. The under trunk is quite large—about two feet long and as wide as the opening of the trunk, and about 2.5 feet deep. Teslas unfortunately do not come with spare tires, and there is a second motor in the back, so the under trunk is a just a function of the design. (Teslas do come with excellent Tesla-provided roadside assistance that will come and change your tire for you. The Tesla agent who explained this said that because of the motor placement there just isn’t the right space for a spare tire. He also said that because of the battery, our tiny sedan weighs about 5,500 lbs, so any jack that can be operated by a normal human wouldn’t be able to lift the car.)

• Politics

  • Tesla is an electric car start up company that entered the car market about a decade ago and has turned into a major disruptor of the auto industry. Humans around the world had been demanding electric vehicles for decades before Tesla came around, and the big auto industry dragged its feet and refused to provide consumers with eco friendly options (most likely at the behest of the fossil fuel industry). Now Tesla has appeared and is forcing all auto makers to invest in R&D to create electric options. Do you want to support a progressive start company that is truly looking to make the world a better, cleaner place, or do you want to give your money to auto makers who represent the status quo? All other auto makers in the world have built their business on pollution and fossil consumption, and refused to change despite consumer demands. They’ve had decades to show us their true colors—and from where I stand, they all look pretty evil.