I Drove a Tesla on Autopilot and Now I’m Ready to Drive to Space

In my youth I read a story about Heath Ledger in which he described his first muscle car, a 1970 Ford Mustang Grande. “This one is full beefcake,” he said, “I saw it and drove it and felt like a man.” I was 10, and a girl, but I fixated on those words. (I fixated on all Heath Ledger’s words.) Until then it had not occurred to me that a car might have an objective beyond safely conveying its riders from home to the community pool. Mine was a Windstar family. We prized reliable airbags and effective child locks.

I was skeptical of Teslas for the same reason I’m skeptical of men who wear camp shirts: They’re full of shit. I say that admiringly, now, where Teslas are concerned. (I have not changed my tune on camp shirts. You look like bootleg Ace Ventura.) Teslas have features that nobody has ever needed. They have features that most consumers aren’t even imaginative enough to want. Ludicrous Mode, a feature that allows you to go from zero to 60 mph in too few seconds for my Windstar heart, is just the tip of the iceberg. You can also customize your dashboard display so that the car appears as Santa’s sleigh, the other cars as reindeer. With the push of a button (with the caress of a touch screen, as it is) the car becomes a dad joke.

I first test-drove a Tesla on Autopilot because my editor thought it would be funny. While in most spheres I am an alpha, on the road I am an extreme beta—the result of a dumb wreck at an impressionable age. I’m not impressed by reckless drivers, but I’ve always wanted to find a balance between their joie de vivre and my clinical caution. When I am required to exit the freeway, I generally travel between one and six exits past the one I was supposed to take, waiting for a wide enough gap to comfortably make a lane change. I do not go above the speed limit, and I would never back around a corner. I am decidedly not the kind of driver who lifts her foot off the gas, relaxes her hands on the wheel, and lets the car call the shots. Autopilot was peak Musk hubris, and thinking about it made my palms sweat.

Before my test drive, the two cheerful Tesla reps fated to ride with me introduced me to the Model 3. One popped the hood, and I gasped. This car had no brain. Where the wires and engine and stuff should be, there was just a felted cavern for your recreational equipment. We walked around the car and one rep lovingly pointed out the door handles, which hide in the doors like testicles retracted from the cold, and the car’s “hips,” contoured and shapely. We stood behind the car and admired the hips for a moment, like two presidents. Then the three of us piled into the Tesla and the open road was mine.

I did not enjoy Autopilot on my virgin drive, but that has more to do with the West Side Highway than the feature. On the West Side Highway one must exercise constant vigilance because of traffic, and Autopilot becomes an exercise in how fast you can engage and disengage it. As I understand it, Autopilot helps you have more fun on roads where you’re already having fun. Luckily I was headed to California, which is full of fun roads, in a few days. Like parents who trust a shy, nerdy boy to take out their daughter because they know he’s not gonna try any funny business, the Tesla reps now trusted me not to do anything crazy on the road. They agreed to let me do some Tesla on my own.

This time I drove a Model S, so my Tesla shepherds took me on another guided spin through Los Angeles to help me familiarize myself with the car. This was very pleasant until they told me to park so they could get out, at which point I ran firmly aground on the curb. The sound of a Tesla scraping concrete is like nothing in nature. If money could scream, that is the sound it would make. I looked from rep to rep in horror. “Should I…” I began. “Sure…” one of the reps said gently. I backed the car off the curb, re-scraping its undercarriage. The other rep, stress and politeness at war on his face, stepped out to inspect the damage. After a moment he cleared me to carry on. I was shattered, but I tried to be cool as I said goodbye. Then I pulled out, alone in the Tesla and trying very hard not to hit anything else. I couldn’t look back, in case I made eye contact.

I, an already timid driver, had never felt more timid. I knew that if I did not enter Autopilot right then, with my Tesla shepherds’ instructions and kind faces fresh in my mind, I would never feel brave enough to do it. I merged onto the freeway and executed a shaky lane change. I said “start Autopilot” to the dashboard several times before I remembered that you have to pull a thing to start Autopilot. I pulled the thing. Autopilot was engaged, and I gently lifted my foot off the pedal, screaming.

The Tesla reps had told me that Autopilot was meant to give me confidence on the road, but I think I had to hit my confidence rock-bottom before Autopilot could build me up again. The car accelerated markedly as I went from what I thought was the speed of traffic (50 mph) to the actual speed of traffic (85 mph). The distance between me and the car ahead of me decreased to a respectable six car lengths from a perhaps overly cautious 900 car lengths. I changed the music from “Another Day of Sun” to something befitting a person comfortable going 85 mph. I knew I was ready for the fast lane, so I signaled left. After a second the car executed an elegant, leisurely lane change to the next lane. I stopped screaming. The car had taken over the stressful bits of freeway driving, and as my insecurities fell away I felt extremely aggro and brave. I bet Elon Musk drove around on Autopilot for hours before he felt brave enough to talk to Grimes.

Over the next few days I re-learned driving. I immediately adjusted to the shorter distances between cars and the higher speeds. A week later I drove a normal car, and I did lane changes like a pro. My Autopilot days were a revelatory crash course in confident driving (and I only crashed that one time!) It was the first time I’ve felt anything but terror in an expensive vehicle. I saw it and drove it and felt like a space god.