YouTuber builds a self-driving go-kart based on Tesla’s Full Self Drive
- This YouTuber had built a miniature Tesla Model S go-kart
- He decided to elevate it by making it self-driving just like a real Tesla
- He had to teach himself very complex coding in order to do it
Published on Feb 07, 2025 at 8:26 PM (UTC+4)
by Daisy Edwards
Last updated on Feb 07, 2025 at 8:26 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Tom Wood
This YouTuber thought that building a Tesla go-kart wasn’t enough, he just had to take it one step further.
Instead of leaving it as a normal electric go-kart, he decided to work out how to modify it so that it was closer to the car he had based it off of and he added self drive.
Despite knowing it would be really complicated, the content creator thought he was up to the test.
The goal for him was to be able to ride around on the self driving go-kart without human intervention at all, just like a real Tesla.
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Driving without humans
YouTuber and inventor Austin Blake went viral a few years ago for building a miniature Tesla Model S EV go-kart which he affectionately named the ‘Teskart’.
This go-kart was fully operational and sparked a lot of joy amongst Blake’s followers, but instead of leaving it at that, he took it one step further by programming it to be just like a nomal-sized Tesla Model S, and gave it full self driving features.
In order to do this, the YouTuber taught himself deep learning and computer vision using a course and used behavioral cloning, a way of teaching a machine to mimic human actions.
He went into the project knowing how tough it would be considering his lack of knowledge on this kind of programming, but was determined to succeed.
The success of the Tesla self-driving go-kart
The first few maiden voyages of the Tesla self-driving go-kart were not very successful, with the little car driving off the road and getting lost.
Blake had collected 48,000+ images for training the vehicle, but found he had to engineer new cameras to better pick up his surroundings.
After the new cameras were in place, things started looking up, but there were still a few errors that Blake just couldn’t get a handle on.
He discovered a tiny error in his coding which suddenly corrected the steering direction issues he had been having and everything started going very smoothly.
It seems after all the learning and dedication Austin Blake put into this Tesla self-driving go-kart made it the little car that could (self park).
Daisy Edwards is a Content Writer at supercarblondie.com. Daisy has more than five years’ experience as a qualified journalist, having graduated with a degree from Goldsmiths, University of London and a dissertation in vintage electric vehicles. Daisy specializes in writing about cars, EVs, tech and luxury lifestyle.
