LOS ANGELES COUNTY — An author conducted comparative week-long tests of multiple vehicle autonomy systems across Los Angeles County. The tests included Tesla Full Self-Driving, General Motors Super Cruise, Rivian Driver+/Highway Assist, Ford BlueCruise, and Lucid DreamDrive.

Tesla Full Self-Driving was tested on multiple vehicles including the Tesla Model 3, Tesla Model Y, and Tesla Cybertruck across Los Angeles County locations including the San Fernando Valley, Santa Clarita, Beverly Hills, Century City, and West Hollywood. Tesla Full Self-Driving automates driving on both local roads and highways, while General Motors Super Cruise is limited to highway driving.

Super Cruise was tested on more than a dozen different General Motors vehicles, model years, and trims over the last two years, including the 2027 Chevy Bolt, GMC Hummer EV SUV, Cadillac Lyriq, Cadillac Optiq, Chevrolet Blazer EV, and Chevrolet Equinox. Each test drive lasted one week except for a 30-minute test drive of a 2027 Chevy Bolt using the latest version of Super Cruise.

Rivian's Driver+/Highway Assist, Ford's BlueCruise, and Lucid's DreamDrive were each tested multiple times in different areas of Southern California. Most vehicle AI/autonomy systems such as Tesla FSD and GM Super Cruise are classified as Level 2 and require constant driver attention.

The author experienced dozens of non-dangerous but unexpected behaviors by Advanced Driver Assistance Systems on nearly every trip. In 2025, a Tesla Model Y using Full Self-Driving at the intersection of Crescent Heights Boulevard and McCarthy Vista near Beverly Hills headed into opposing traffic, requiring manual intervention to avoid an incident.

In 2024, a GMC Hummer EV using Super Cruise did not detect a concrete barrier blocking the far right-hand lane on Highway 14 in Palmdale, California, requiring last-second manual control to avoid a collision. In 2024, a Cadillac Lyriq using Super Cruise on Interstate 5 near Santa Clarita, California failed to recognize that two left lanes were closed for construction, requiring manual intervention to avoid crashing into construction equipment.

A Tesla Cybertruck on Autopilot failed to follow a right-hand curve of a Y-shaped overpass and crashed into a concrete barrier on the overpass. Elon Musk stated, "Logs show driver disengaged Autopilot four seconds before crashing."

"Modern ADAS and AV systems are already highly capable, but they are only as reliable as the data they've been trained on. While AV companies collect petabytes of driving data, scale alone does not guarantee comprehensive coverage. What matters is whether models are exposed to the right scenarios—especially rare edge cases (unusual actors, lighting conditions) and long-tail situations (human unpredictability, ambiguous signage, construction zones)." said Jason Corso, Toyota Professor of AI at the University of Michigan and chief scientist and cofounder at Voxel51.