Last summer, a young woman pulled out in front of me and I was unable to stop. Thankfully we were both ok. My Toyota Prius did not fare so well. Alas, my beloved Prius did not survive the accident.

I was in the car market at a fortunate time. As my previous coworkers will attest, I always wanted to get an electric car - specifically a Tesla Model 3. I had a collection of five or so different Tesla Hot Wheels on my desk. Little did I know I was about to purchase the real life version.

Market conditions worked out just right so that used Model 3s were well within my price range. I found a great dealership that specializes in used EVs and we were able to take advantage of the Federal EV credit as well. The dealer had several options in perfect shape and after some deliberation we ended up driving home a 2021 Model 3.

Like I said, this was late summer. I was just blown away by how different driving the Model 3 felt compared to traditional gas cars. It felt like getting in a spaceship everyday - and to be honest it still does. Getting used to the touchscreen controls. The sleekness of everything. As a designer I really appreciated the care and thought put into this car. It was by far the nicest car I’ve ever owned.

So yes, I’m a super happy Tesla owner. The feel of the driving, the service experience, everything about it was great.

However, AutoPilot lane-keeping was definitely just “ok”. I’m more adventurous testing things like “letting a computer drive the car” than my wife, but AutoPilot gave me a few good scares. Overall, it was fine though. But the meat and potatoes of a Tesla experience is Full Self Driving right?

When Christmas rolled around, I decided to subscribe to FSD for a month and try it. That would give me time to evaluate it while we were doing a lot of driving for the holidays. What I did not realize at the time was that the FSD technology isn’t just an add-on, it is an integral piece of what makes a Tesla a Tesla. It’s the primary differentiator between a Tesla and some other EV. I am aware other EVs exist and other EVs even offer “driver assistance systems” like FSD. While FSD is certainly not perfect and it cannot take over unsupervised (yet) I can’t imagine anyone making a good faith argument that FSD has the most training data / real world experience of any driver assistance system.

The difference shows when you are using it. The first few times you let FSD drive while you “supervise” it is extremely nerve wracking. Each time you get behind the wheel and activate FSD your anxiety about it decreases more and more. Eventually it just becomes a regular part of driving.

This is a game changer.

I love driving my Tesla - the manual driving experience is phenomenal and like I mentioned earlier it feels like you are behind the wheel of a space ship. However adding the ability to just enable “Autopilot” (a since retired term for FSD) gives you a massive mental rest that I would have never expected. The amount of mental taxation that FSD takes off your plate is astounding.

Driving a Tesla is an exhilarating experience already. Adding FSD on top of that is an entirely new, equally impressive experience.