At 70 years old, after nearly seven decades behind the wheel without a serious accident, Fritz Hasler learned what it feels like to have one—and discovered that sometimes loss leads to something better. On May 9th, 2026, his 2019 Tesla Model 3 was totaled in an intersection collision near his grandson's graduation at UW Madison. Hasler takes full responsibility: he was driving with the Full Self Driving system active but failed to watch carefully for cross traffic and accelerated through a stop sign. Had he simply let the car drive, he reflects now, the accident would never have happened. But from that moment of reckoning came the opportunity to embrace Tesla's latest innovations—a new Model Y with Hardware 4 and Full Self Driving V14 that has transformed how he thinks about driving altogether.
Hasler and his wife faced practical constraints. They were living in their northern Wisconsin summer home in a state where dealer associations have successfully blocked Tesla deliveries, so buying locally wasn't an option. They needed a car with a tow hitch—essential for carrying his two large mountain ebikes on a rear carrier—and the factory installation meant an 11-week wait. Then Tesla's Lake Elmo, Minnesota location, just across the Saint Croix River near Minneapolis on I-90/94, had exactly what they needed in inventory. The base Model Y in dark grey rear-wheel drive cost approximately $40,000 with zero percent financing for six years, though Hasler's credit score hovered just below the required 720 threshold. The financing came through anyway. After a 251-mile drive in a rental car, they arrived to find their new vehicle waiting with a bow on top.
The jump from a seven-year-old Model 3 to the latest Model Y proved eye-opening. Gone are the two stalks behind the steering wheel; the new car uses only the left stalk for turn signals, with thumb wheels and buttons on the steering wheel and touchscreen controlling nearly everything else. Hasler admits the shift-between-forward-and-reverse control—a slider on the display screen—frustrates him; after two weeks, the car's automatic shifting rarely engages when he expects it to. But the Full Self Driving "Supervised" V14 is something else entirely. It holds the center of the lane with precision even on sharp turns and roundabouts, makes accurate intersection turns, and offers five driving modes from Sloth (for leisurely sightseeing with his wife) to Mad Max (30 mph over the speed limit). For the first time, Hasler doesn't constantly fiddle with the speed adjustment—Standard mode maintains his selected speed above the limit and slows automatically in town.
New Teslas arrive with a month of Free Full Self Driving, but keeping it requires a $100 monthly subscription. Without it, owners get only traffic-aware cruise control and no steering assist—a first for Tesla. The Model Y also introduces Grok, the AI assistant accessible by holding the steering wheel microphone button, which can interpret navigation commands. Though Grok occasionally stumbles (it still doesn't understand waypoints), it represents another step toward seamless vehicle integration.
As Hasler prepares his next article detailing his Model Y's 154-mile journey to Bayfield, Wisconsin, on Lake Superior, one thing is clear: sometimes a costly mistake clears the way for something transformative. At 70, he's not just learning new technology—he's discovering that letting machines handle the driving might be the safest choice he's made in decades.