Alex Roy Broke The Transcontinental EV Record With No Hands

Alex Roy, best known to us as the Gumballer with the fake German police car, has just broken the EV coast-to-coast record in a Tesla Model S P85D. For those of you unfamiliar with the New Yorker’s previous exploits, it’s not the first time he’s taken part in a cross-country record attempt. In 2006, with the help of his long time friend Bill Maher, he smashed the transcontinental record with a time of 31 hours 4 minutes, breaking the previous record of 32 hours 7 minutes which was set back in 1983. That’s an average speed of 90.1mph across 2,794 miles.

This time, the run has been a bit more sedate, which is to be expected in a car that needs at least 30 minutes to re-juice. Stopping at various Supercharging stations Alex has given a running commentary on the lack of amenities at each site on Facebook and Instagram. Turns out if you own a Tesla, crapping behind a bush is the order of the day. But then again, it’s still highly impressive that there is an infrastructure in place to allow this sort of record attempt to happen at all.

Why do Tesla Supercharging stations need to be so-

A video posted by Alex Roy (@alexroy144) on Oct 20, 2015 at 7:16am PDT

But what has made the whole thing more impressive has been his use of the autonomous driving function. In a series of instagram posts he’s shown the car happily cruising along at 90mph with no steering input at all. Scary, but very awesome.

Repeat after me: "I will not fall asleep while the car is driving itself."

A video posted by Alex Roy (@alexroy144) on Oct 20, 2015 at 4:13am PDT

The good news for those of us on this side of the pond is that this tech is expected to hit our shores soon. Earlier today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted:

But his tweet does sound like he’s a little bit worried; though there have been many demonstrations that the technology works well, it’s only supposed to be used on larger highways. This isn’t inherently a problem, apart from the fact that it’s not yet idiot proof - just search YouTube for videos of people trying to use it on smaller roads, which can quickly confuse the car. Having a driver relinquishing control to a computer has regulators worried, which is the reason for the hold up, but it appears Musk is confident he’ll overcome these issues.

The reason Musk is confident these ‘failure’ videos won’t be a problem is because, in Alex’s words, “Tesla Autopilot fail videos are products of idiots who don’t read warnings.” I think we can take that advice from someone who’s travelled the breadth of America hardly touching the wheel. The only apparent problem seems to be that the system is a little too effortless. Sitting at 90mph for sustained periods is just asking for trouble and this is what resulted in them receiving a speeding ticket on the Kansas Colorado border. Unfortunately, no one had the courage to blame it on the car…

With the fast pace of EV development this record will most likely be short lived. But Alex’s efforts won’t have been for nothing. He’s demonstrated that autonomous driving can be quick and safe, even if that’s something us petrol heads don’t really want to hear.