To my right, a giant, growling tractor-trailer rig squeezed hard against me while a solid line of typically wild traffic roared by on the left.
Even with my hands pressed against my legs, my palms began to get a little moist. I don’t even use cruise control in my car.
Undaunted, the electric-powered Tesla sailed along silently at 65 mph in the middle lane, slowing several times for clumps of traffic ahead and tracking cleanly through slight curves as we neared Mockingbird Lane.
If Stemmons had been a little clearer, I could have clicked on my turn signal, and the Tesla would have changed lanes with no input from me.
I was left to mostly watch the road, ceding control to Tesla’s activist computers — a disconnected driver in one of the auto industry’s most connected cars.
It was one of the strangest experiences I’ve had in the front seat of a car.
Get used to it, I thought.
“Tesla is pushing the autonomous envelope in ways that a mainstream automaker probably wouldn’t,” said Jessica Caldwell, senior analyst at Edmunds.com. “It’s definitely something people buzz about and a real step toward true autonomy.”
Tesla, the California electric-car company that has dazzled the auto industry with its powerfully styled luxury sedans, says self-driving vehicles are a “core part of our mission.”
“I think it will be quite unusual to see cars that don’t have full autonomy … in the 15- to 20-year time-frame,” Elon Musk, the free-spirited founder of Tesla, has said. “And for Tesla, it will be a lot sooner than that.”
In October, the company announced on its blog that it had developed software that would blend a range of existing and new technologies into a system called Autopilot that can take over driving duties on the highway.
The system can’t read red lights or stop signs yet, so it is intended for open stretches of roads and still needs to be monitored by the driver.
But Tesla’s “software 7.0” is the first big step toward a future of self-driving cars that many people expected to arrive before 2020.
“They’re a business, and they want to succeed,” said Stephanie Brinley, senior analyst at IHS Automotive in Michigan. “But Tesla’s mission as a company is to encourage electrification, and because of that, they may make decisions on a slightly different basis.”
Many of the high-tech tools in Tesla’s Autopilot system have been used for several years in other vehicles.
They were developed one at a time over the last 10 years or so — electric-assist steering that can be manipulated by the car’s computers; active cruise control that will apply the brakes if a car gets too close to traffic ahead; lane-departure and side-warning systems that can push a vehicle back into its lane; and sharper cameras for backing up and other applications.
Moreover, luxury automakers like Audi and Mercedes-Benz now offer traffic-jam systems that can be activated in bumper-to-bumper driving, allowing a car to automatically follow the vehicle in front of it.
Tesla’s software was beamed into every Model S built over the last year or so — about 21,000 cars — all of which were already equipped with the necessary hardware.
Autopilot will be updated as the technology is refined, including the capability to read stop signs and red lights.
“Tesla 7.0 is already the most sophisticated system on the market,” said Alexis Georgeson, a spokeswoman for Tesla Motors in Palo Alto. “But we also have the ability to upgrade the system and push the improvements to our owners over the air, overnight.”
The 2015 Model S P90D I had — a loaded $125,000 sedan with two electric motors, all-wheel-drive and 691 horsepower — was equipped with a forward radar, a forward-looking camera, 12 long-range ultrasonic sensors and several other sophisticated tools.
As I pulled onto Stemmons, easily merging with traffic thanks to the Tesla’s brutal horsepower, I depressed a stalk on the left side of the steering column, setting the cruise control at 65.
Then I pulled the stalk toward me twice, turning on Autopilot and illuminating a small green steering wheel on the 5,000-pound car’s instrument panel.
At that point, I had mostly ceded control of the car to Tesla’s activist computers.
As long as Autopilot’s cameras and sensors could see lane markers, the system remained on, eerily moving the steering wheel as it negotiated curves.
If I touched the wheel, Autopilot automatically turned off and I was driving again. And if Autopilot couldn’t read the lane markers — which happened a couple of times on rough old Stemmons — it flashed me a warning that I was officially back in the driver’s seat.
Autopilot arrives at an interesting time for Tesla Motors, a 12-year-old company that finally earned its first profit in early 2013 and whose stock regularly sells for more than $200 a share, six to eight times the typical price for a share of General Motors or Ford stock.
This year, Tesla began selling its second major electric vehicle, the Model X SUV. The company also continues to work on a midsize sedan that’s expected to cost about $35,000 and have a range of roughly 200 miles in its lithium-ion battery pack.
But giant GM also is bringing a midsize electric sedan to market that should offer the same capabilities as Tesla’s Model Three, which will be priced at around $35,000 with a range of about 200 miles. The sedan, which is expected to arrive sometime in 2017, will be Tesla’s third vehicle — joining the Model S and the new Model X.
And Audi, Porsche and Mercedes-Benz, among others, plan to unveil stylish luxury electric vehicles of their own over the next few years.
Even after years of promotion, electric vehicles account for a minuscule 1 percent or so of new-vehicle sales. Low gas prices have depressed their growth further.
Sales of the Nissan Leaf, for example — the most mainstream EV in the U.S. — were down 39 percent through October, according to Automotive News.
Yet electric vehicles remain a focus in the auto industry as increasingly strict emissions and fuel economy standards continue to cloud the future of gas-powered engines.
The Model Three is important because it could give Tesla the sort of mainstream volumes it needs to bring production costs down.
The Model S sedan, for example, has a base price of $71,100, and the Model X is expected to start at $132,000.
Although sales of the Model S were up 13.5 percent through October, its volume remains tiny — a little more than 17,000 cars in the U.S. through October, according to Automotive News.
“Tesla does need something more accessible,” said Brinley, the IHS analyst. “It’s just one of the many challenges you face as a young automaker.”
But Tesla’s cachet could keep it charging along, even with new obstacles in its path.
The Tesla I had, for instance, offered a claimed range of 260 to 280 miles — an impressive distance — and the company has estabished a network of quick-charging stations for its cars, including several in Texas.
“I think Tesla took the mainstream automakers by storm,” said Caldwell of Edmunds.com. “Fans of Tesla are so vocal, even if they don’t own one. They just have that special cool factor that others want to emulate.”
As much as I admired — and liked — the high-tech, multi-tasking Tesla, I don’t think I could ever live with one. Driving is a sensory experience for me, and I still savor the old-school thunder of big horsepower percolating from a real gasoline V-8 engine.
But the Tesla — a slinky vessel of immense capabilities — brings all-new meaning to driving Miss Daisy.
©2015 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.