Alex Roy completes first Tesla FSD cannonball run with zero interventions across 3,081 miles

show. It's very cool.

Yeah. Well, we have our next guest in the reream waiting room. I'm going to tell you about Octa. Octa helps you assign every AI agent a trusted identity so you get the power of AI without the risk. Secure every agent. Secure [music] any agent with Octa. We have Alex Roy, the co-founder and general partner of New Industry VC back on the show. Welcome back. How are you doing

with some big news?

Tired.

We gota we got Yeah. Yeah. Tired. So, yeah, take us through the news. How did this come together? What' you do?

So, uh after four attempts in the course of a year, uh my team finally cross the country to set the first Tesla FSD Cannonball Run Drive with zero interventions. And yeah, I wish we had a gong at the end. It was a hall. Uh it took uh 15 extra hours to do it in the winter than it would have uh on a regular attempt. It was it was a

So basically it needed snow chains or something and you couldn't do that. So you had to just pull over. What what why the extra 15 hours?

Uh well so the first half we left from the west coast headed east. First half was pretty good weather, but as soon as we get to the the eastern half, the big storm was just kicking in. And you know, we were wearing brand new allseason tires um because I was hoping to make up some decent speed. We probably should have brought snow tires. A lot of it had to do with the temperature effect on the batteries and so we had a lot of extra charging.

Okay.

Uh the the big secret though, yeah,

the secret is um if we had not been in the car, we probably would have made it four to five hours faster. Every mistake was human error. Navigational error or charging error.

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Explain like what charging error just taking an extra second to plug the charger in or going to the wrong charger.

So, you know, you could if you just follow the Tesla Nav all the way. Uh it will pick its charging stops and the length of the optimal stops that it thinks are optimal. Um, but based on, you know, I guess me thinking I'm smarter than the Tesla GPS, I kept trying to reroute it and optimize and get buy some time. Every time I did that, it cost actually cost us time. And it rerouted us on smaller roads,

including roads that really were not passable. So, we had to double back at least once. Okay.

Uh, and then

we had one big near disaster, which the story has not yet been told.

Okay. Uh, I'll tell you now, the big secret is, you know,

if you want to charge in wintertime and use FSD to back into a charger, then the back camera's got to be clean.

So, when you've got 2 hours of driving and snow and salt on the back camera, it doesn't always want to back up to a charger. And so,

the cheat, which allegedly some people have used, is to try to summon the car into the charger. But, you know, I think that's not really kosher. So, our solution was to navigate the car to a point into the parking lot near the charger, get out, clean the glass, and then reactivate FSD cuz you can't turn FSD off. Then you're cheating.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, at like 2:00 in the morning in Western Pennsylvania, it's below zero. My code driver Paul Fam gets out of the car to clean the glass and he gives us the thumbs up and he's out of the car and we engage FSD and the car doesn't back up to the charger. It advances through the truck stop and begins following the sign to say one way and leaving the truck stop abandoning him behind. The first man ever abandoned by an autonomous vehicle and the next exit was 50 miles away. So, an hour and 45 minutes round trip. And so, we left him because, you know,

we're here for the record. Yeah, we left. [laughter] We called him. We're like, listen, we'll be back for you, but we cannot disengage. We're two days into this. We're committed. We're fully committed. And so, he's like

he's like, just don't don't leave me here. Just come back. And we did come back. But let me tell you, if that second time, if the car had not stopped for him, we would have run out of charge and would have been game over. So, that was that was pretty hair raising. Why did why did the prior runs fail? Like I'm sure they all failed for different reasons, but uh what did those look like?

So, the first run was with uh Tesla FSD 12564 about 13 months ago, and on that one, we had like 21 disengagements for charging because the car would just not back into a charger. And the rest were, you know, system failures, you know, reboots, uh, wrong direction, uh, the the red hands of death with Tes Tesla calls a, you know, a takeover immediately warning. And it was just endless issues. And so on each subsequent drive, it improved, but there's no question that Tesla FSD 1422 is a is a game chang. It's a total game changer because you we went from, you know, a dozen disengagements and technical issues to zero in one software update. And that is it's incredible. And it's incredible to me that anyone who's been in a Tesla has not used FSD, the latest version. Total game changer.

Yeah. I uh my neighbor has a Tesla. He's always raving about it. I'm finally this weekend. I'm going to tell him uh finally take take me out. Last time I was in a a Tesla that was self-driving with my friend uh my friends Ryan and Spencer uh within like two minutes of starting up. This was maybe six months ago. The car took one of the most heinous illegal turns that I've ever uh I've ever been in a car. I've never been in a car actually do a turn that that was that was that sketchy. But uh excited to try it again. Uh want to want to talk about uh get your reaction to the uh the news Elon shared uh on Wednesday during earnings about the updates to the fleet. Were you expecting that? Uh what was your first reaction? Uh, I'm heartbroken about the cancellation of the S and the X because I love my S and mine is less than a year old. I was expecting them to update it again. Um, but you know, the car is not a big seller and um, it's I I totally understand it. The X, you know, I kind of think it's the Lamborghini Countach of our time. Uh but once again such things have to die and uh you know I know a lot of people who are buying the last generation cars right now and placing orders and part of me wants to but I understand where he's coming from and I think I'll probably get another 10 years out of my ass and I'll be happy with that. You know life goes on.

Yeah. I think the big secret he might be he might be holding back [laughter] is that in a few years you might be able to buy an Optimus for you know 10 or $15,000 and then it'll just drive any car so it doesn't

Yeah, that's that's interesting. That would be that would be a funny funny way that you get to like full full autonomy. Everyone just hires a private a private driver.

Get in the Lamborghini Countach optimist. I want you rowing on. [laughter] But, you know, I s I've seen, you know, uh I've been to to conferences five, six years ago where I saw prototype humanoids that were meant only to drive cars. They didn't have the mountains of data, you know, that and you know, AI that we currently see on humanoids like Optimus, but it's not crazy. It's certainly not impossible.

Yeah. Can you clarify?

What about uh I got to ask you about Roadster. Uh Elon Elon confirmed that Roadster is still coming. uh when he was on Joe Rogan, he was alluding to it being potentially a flying car or or potentially be able to travel in the air. Do you have do you have any theories?

Well, uh I'm sure the Roadster will be amazing. There is a uh Chinese uh sports car recently which demonstrated a suspension that could jump over road uh potholes and road imperfections. And even if that's all it did, that is impressive. Now, is it practical? No, probably not so much.

In LA, there's a lot of potholes.

Yeah. I mean, you know, who knows, you know, but it, you know, Tesla, it almost doesn't matter what it does because every car is iconic and every car is seminal and sets the bar. Doesn't have to sell that many of them. He only has to deliver cars and that sets the bar for 10 to 15 years on, you know, whatever it is. So, it just doesn't matter. You know, the funny thing about Tesla is that it's the only car brand that lets you virtue signal or vice signal based on you. You know, you want to say you're green and you're you're clean living, you never get a Tesla. You want to say that you could use 0 to 60 in one second and be a complete jerk, you can do that. No other brand has such power and narrative command besides Tesla.

That's very funny. Uh yeah, tell me more about uh the the the mechanics and experience of the actual of the actual Cannonball. Um do you have to is uh did did you do the traditional like leaving from the red ball garage? Do you just are you interfacing making all the decisions of when to stop for whatever you need to just on the screen and then do you have to is there driver monitoring with a camera that's watching you on this? Like what's the actual experience of being in the driver's seat for a stint?

Uh it's uh I want to I don't want to say it's terrible, but it's um it's uh in when the weather's good, it's quite boring and you want to make sure you got people in the car that you really like because it's a hall. I mean, we were in the car for 58 hours, almost 5822. And so, in a in a way, a gas cannonball at high speed is much is easier because it's, you know, half could be half the length of [laughter] time.

Um, and you're also your adrenaline's pumping the whole time. So, you don't feel time passing on these electric and autonomous cannonballs. It's it's a it's a hall. And so, you know, you start when we did start this time at at the traditional finish line. We're down to a beach and then go east just cuz that's where the car was. And uh you literally just put it in Red Ball Garage as your finish line and you and the car just goes. Yeah.

And so you well in my case foolishly try to play with the charging stops to cut time

and that rarely works. Uh Tesla has a very very good navigation algorithm to optimize for charging stops. And now in FSD 14223 you could pick fastest route or best amenities and fewer stops. fewer stops, longer charges, and um you know, there there's an argument for it because you'd have fewer instances in which to clean and fewer charging stations where something could go wrong.

Yeah.

Uh and so, but other than that, you're letting the car do its thing.

And uh honestly, the system is so good now, none of us in the car, we're all, you know, pretty experienced race drivers and Tesla drivers. Not once did any of us feel that we were in danger. Not once.

That's amazing. Yeah, it was it was really really surprising.

Is there uh sort of a selfish question because I don't know how many people be interested in it besides John and I, but anybody doing uh anybody doing anything interesting on track only EVs

for for enthusiasts?

I haven't seen it yet. I mean, the Formula E is a race, you can go watch it. Yeah. Um I haven't seen

I haven't I have not yet seen anything that was pure electric on a track that was really fantastic. And it's mostly due to a short I mean there aren't enough OEMs making great electric sports cars yet that you could run head-to-head. So you're really looking at spec races and I have not yet seen those like achieve scale. Uh I mean it's inevitable. It's going to happen. Um it's just we're not quite there yet. Uh I imagine we'll see an autonomous well I think I think we we're going to see electric and autonomous cannonball events head-to-head. And even today, if someone wanted to send 10 Teslas cross country in FSD, it would be really entertaining because every team thinks they can they can cheat the Tesla GPS. And as I have learned the hard way, it's very hard to. But everyone's going to try. I'm sure.

When's the next run?

As soon as the weather clears, [laughter] honestly, the day that we arrived, I I texted David Moss who set the first [music] cross. He set the the Southern Route uh you know cannib not the cannibal the Southern Route uh FSD record like two weeks before us and he's like oh my god I was going to leave tomorrow. I'm like good good thing you didn't because the weather really sucks.

If if the weather was good one could easily shave 13 hours off this time just by not touching the the nav at all.

And so and beyond that it's someone would maybe tweak the battery charging like hack the car. You can maybe shave another three hours off that time.

Oh yeah. It's inevitable and there's gonna I I think four or five people will go within six months.

Amazing. Uh well, thank you so much for coming on the show and breaking it down.

Fantastic work.

Fantastic work. Congratulations.

Uh yeah, I wish I wish that you could stream in while you're on the run. I don't I don't if if

the back seat

if that's ever possible. Let us know.

We we tested a Starlink and next time we're going to bring probably two. Okay.

And we would love to stream straight to TVPN next time. Absolutely fantastic. Let's do it.

Amazing. We'll talk to you soon. Have a great weekend.

Great to see you. Goodbye. Cheers.

Railway. Railway is the all-in-one intelligent cloud provider. Use your favorite agent to deploy apps, servers, databases, and more. While Railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring, and security. And of course, let me remind you that on February 3rd, the Cisco AI Summit brings together leaders from Nvidia, OpenAI, AWS, and more to discuss the future of the AI economy. The whole world will be live streamed, and we'll be there for a gig stream. And yes, we're going to talk more about Moltbook. But first, we're bringing in Bobby from the American Housing Corporation. Welcome to the stream, Bobby. How are you doing?

It's great to be here.

Thanks so much for hopping on the show.

Great to have you. Big uh big week in