Why Tesla FSD is a ‘nuclear’ moment
Elon Musk has responded to an Australian journalist who dished up a different sort of critique on Tesla’s latest move Down Under.
Elon Musk has responded to an Australian journalist who dished up a different sort of critique on his EV company Tesla’s latest move Down Under.
A story out of News Corp’s Motoring team [you can read the story below] on Tesla’s new Fully Self-Driving (Supervised) software caught the attention of Musk, who retweeted the comments to his 226.6m followers on his social media platform X.
The tweet referenced a story on the FSD experience – which was introduced to Australia last week. It also quoted a video shot by our motoring team in a Tesla Model Y freshly installed with FSD – accompanying the story describing the ‘groundbreaking’ new car tech.
It quoted a discussion between News Corp Motoring Editor David McCowen and Digital Editor James MacSmith on the merits of FSD.
“Once you’ve driven with FSD for any length of time, it’s hard to imagine life without it.” MacSmith was quoted as saying.
“Elon Musk and Tesla have changed the way we drive forever. There’s no looking back. We put it through a weekend of challenging traffic situations, road work, merging/disappearing lanes, six-way intersections, Saturday sport traffic,
Sunday go-slow drivers and the system negotiated them all with nuance and aplomb.
“Indeed it is so good, its easy of use and stress-free experience might even convince my fortysomething wife to finally get her driver’s license. It’s that good.”
This is still just version 13 https://t.co/ebTv8Kb8Qz
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 25, 2025
“This is still just version 13”. refers to the version of the FSD software currently available in Australia. In America, version 14 is available.
Australia was the fifth country to have FSD introduced after the likes of the US, Mexico and Canada.
WHY TESLA FSD IS A ‘NUCLEAR MOMENT’
‘Are you telling me this sucker is self-driving?!’
With slight apologies to Michael J. Fox – because I don’t think he would mind – but this iconic quote from Back to the Future’s Marty McFly dropped into my head like a nuclear blast while I spent the weekend with Elon Musk’s latest and so far greatest gift to humanity:
A car that drives itself (With a little help from you).
That’s right. A. Car. That. Drives. Itself.
Doc Emmett Brown needed plutonium to get the DeLorean going to the future and back. All Elon needed to bring the future to us was a little bit of that ‘optimistic futurism’ sprinkled around.
MORE: Tesla’s FSD (Supervised) arrives in Australia
Telsa have named their new robot car (our words, not theirs) Full Self-Driving (Supervised).
It’s hard to work out how a bloke who named his son X Æ A-12 came up with such a boring name for the biggest thing to happen to cars since Henry Ford finished tinkering around in his garage.
But there you go.
Perhaps it’s to appease nanny-state regulators. Who love boring. Luckily FSD itself is anything but.
It’s hard to fully illustrate the humungous impact Telsa’s new self-driving software – introduced to Australia last week – will have on ourselves and our roads.
It’s so remarkable in that in time it soon becomes rather unremarkable at all.
A seamless integration to your driving Like an AI assistant. A shadow chauffeur.
MORE: The wild EV ‘trying to kill pedestrians’
It probably needs a cheesy name like Siri. Maybe Sophie could work? But Tesla doesn’t roll like that.
Once the software is updated onto the Tesla’s computer, for a flat fee of up to $10,000 or a monthly subscription of around $130, all the car needs is a destination and a press of a button and it’s driving itself.
We put it through a weekend of challenging traffic situations, road work, merging/disappearing lanes, six-way intersections, Saturday sport traffic, Sunday go-slow drivers and the system negotiated them all with nuance and aplomb.
In fact all it needed for Sydney’s motoring landscape was a road rage setting and the integration would have been complete.
MORE: Hacker exposes Tesla’s FSD
And once you’ve driven with FSD for any length of time, it’s hard to imagine life without it.
Indeed it is so good, its easy of use and stress-free experience might even convince my fortysomething wife to finally get her driver’s license. It’s that good.
In time and hindsight, one feels the introduction of Tesla’s FSD will be akin to a huge technological advance like the television set or Apple’s iPhone. At first, they inspired such awe and turned everyday life on its head. But now you simply couldn’t imagine life without them.
That is Elon’s true gift to tired and stressed and diffident drivers everywhere.
Of course it takes way from the driving experience, but so does driving an automatic transmission. And when was the last time you even saw a manual car?
If it’s true FDS can and does reduce the number and severity of crashes, that can only be a good thing.
Now it’s time for other carmakers to catch up.
At the very least, Marty McFly and Doc Brown gave us one of the best movies ever made, if their contribution to anything else was minimal.
At the very least, Elon Musk and Telsa have changed the way we drive forever. There's no looking back.
That is nuclear.
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