13% of owners say Autopilot has put them in a dangerous situation 28% say Autopilot has saved them from a dangerous situation

Autopilot is great as a second set of eyes on the road.

Six drivers claimed that Autopilot actually contributed to a collision, while nine people in the Bloomberg survey went so far as to credit the system with saving their lives. Hundreds of owners recalled dangerous behaviors, such as phantom braking, veering or failing to stop for a road hazard. But even those who reported shortcomings gave Autopilot high overall ratings.

More than 90% of owners said driving with Autopilot makes them safer—including most of the respondents who simultaneously faulted the software for creating dangerous situations.

Tesla currently offers two packages of Autopilot features. The basic version comes standard and includes automatic in-lane steering and advanced cruise control. For a $7,000 upgrade to what Tesla calls “Full Self-Driving,” a Model 3 owner gets frequent software updates that Tesla promises will eventually allow the car to drive itself. The most it can do today is “Navigate on Autopilot,” a feature that can take over most aspects of driving on highways: changing lanes, passing slower cars, moving from one highway to another, and steering onto the exit ramp.

Drivers Rate Autopilot Safety Very High The newest ‘beta’ features are less reliable Very Dissatisfied

Very Dissatisfied Somewhat Dissatisfied

Somewhat Dissatisfied Neutral

Neutral Somewhat Satisfied

Somewhat Satisfied Very Satisfied Average score Autopilot Safety (Full Self-Driving,Enhanced Autopilot,Autopilot) …Only cars that have Autopilot 14

46

343

1178

2484 4.49 …Only cars that have not Autopilot 8

20

226

63

82 3.48 Autopilot (Autopilot) …Only cars that have Autopilot 4

15

58

222

403 4.43 …Only cars that have not Autopilot





1

4.00 Full Self-Driving (Full Self-Driving) …Only cars that have Autopilot 30

55

403

681

924 4.15 …Only cars that have not Autopilot



1

2

3.67 “Navigate on Autopilot” Reliability (Full Self-Driving,Enhanced Autopilot) …Only cars that have Autopilot 42

182

772

1393

904 3.89 …Only cars that have not Autopilot 12

33

556

165

151 3.45

It moved me to the side in the blink of an eye when a car suddenly changed lanes to where I was... The Autopilot reacted crazy fast.

Autopilot is not the only approach to self driving. Waymo, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., believes that Tesla’s gradual transition to self-driving features could leave drivers dangerously complacent in their oversight of the system. For more than a decade, Waymo has been taking an all-or-nothing approach: either cars drive themselves or humans do, with nothing in-between.

Autopilot couldn’t be more different. Tesla’s neural-net computers require training with massive amounts of real-world data, which Tesla gathers from its customers. All new Tesla cars come equipped with some version of Autopilot, and drivers collectively have logged some 2 billion miles under its direction.

When Tesla adds a new element to Autopilot, it starts by deploying to a small group of “early access” customers. Data recorded from their cars is then used to refine the feature, access is expanded, and more refinements follow. New features that seem crude and unreliable at first can be transformed within weeks.

Autopilot mistakes don’t look like human mistakes. When a Tesla is in the news after crashing into a parked car, for example, it’s easy to assume that the system is broken. But for every story like that, there are others in which Autopilot bounces radar signals beneath or around cars to sense danger, or swerves to avoid a truck merging into a blind spot.

Tesla owners in Bloomberg’s survey for the most part side with Musk’s approach, even when Autopilot occasionally screws up. We asked owners to describe times when Autopilot either put them in a dangerous situation or avoided what might have otherwise been unavoidable danger.

Positive Autopilot Experience

Positive Autopilot Experience Negative Autopilot Experience

Negative Autopilot Experience Experienced Crash While Autopilot Was Enabled

Smart Summon is a great step towards the eventual self-driving future, but it is very ‘beta’ at this point. It is not safe for use yet if you’re not a very experienced user.

This summer Tesla released “Smart Summon,” one of Autopilot’s most ambitious features yet. Using the Tesla app on a smartphone, drivers outside a vehicle can “summon” their cars to their location through a busy parking lots. With no driver behind the wheel, the car chooses its route and navigates around other vehicles and pedestrians. The owner can stop the car at any time by releasing their finger from the phone.

As soon as the feature came out, videos flooded social media with empty Teslas awkwardly traversing the parking lots of America’s Walmarts and Costcos. A week later, Bloomberg sent out a follow-up survey to 1,732 Model 3 owners with the Full Self-Driving option to get some initial impressions. One owner described the summon feature as driving like “nervous teenager with a learner’s permit.”

70% of owners say Smart Summon is a useful feature 41% say it’s reliable enough for the average driver

Smart Summon will make more sense when you can send it off to park in a spot on its own without supervision.

Smart Summon is the clearest expression yet of Tesla’s approach to autonomy. Parking lots are notoriously difficult for computers. There are no hard rules. Cars regularly drive across road markings or along the wrong side of traffic. Obstacles abound: pedestrians, cars, shopping carts, strollers. Getting Smart Summon right requires a deep understanding of human behavior. The feature may also help Tesla figure out where people like to get dropped off and picked up, which will become critical data if the company tries to launch an automated taxi service.

Some safety advocates criticize Tesla for using its customers as guinea pigs. Musk says that real-world training is the quickest path—and possibly the only one—to ending the carnage of car crashes, which last year killed 40,000 Americans and 1.4 million people worldwide. For Smart Summon, at least, mistakes happen at parking-lot speeds and are less likely to result in serious harm.

In the first month after its release, drivers used Smart Summon more than a million times, Musk reported on an Oct. 24 earnings call. Tesla’s “massive fleet” of Autopilot-equipped cars “allows us to check these corner cases and learn from them,” Musk said, promising a significant software upgrade “in the coming weeks.”

Below are more than 800 owner comments gathered by the survey after the initial release of Smart Summon. The comments are sorted according to the owner’s evaluation of its usefulness and reliability.