Tesla FSD's First Slovenian Exam: Mangart Saddle Road, 2,055 Meters Up

Days after Tesla's FSD (Supervised) received approval in Slovenia, autonomous-driving researcher Jan Skočaj took it to the hardest road in the country: Mangart Saddle Road — the highest paved road in Slovenia at 2,055 meters, cut into the side of the Julian Alps.

His footage, posted on X on 13 September 2026 and viewed more than 850,000 times in four days, shows the part of autonomy that highway demos never test.

The situation

Mangart Saddle Road is barely wider than a single car in stretches. There is rock face on one side and alpine drop on the other. Midway through the drive, an oncoming SUV appears in a section where two vehicles simply do not fit.

A human driver would stop, breathe, and start the slow choreography of mountain courtesy: reverse to the nearest wider spot, yield, wave the other car through. FSD does exactly that — without being asked. It slows, backs up to a passing place, inches aside, and lets the SUV through. Then it repeats the maneuver for several more oncoming cars.

The driver never touches the wheel.

Why this is the real test

Most autonomy footage lives on highways: clear lane markings, predictable traffic, no cliffs. Mountain passes are the opposite — the skills they demand are the ones that separate a demo from a driver:

• Reversing under uncertainty. FSD had to back up along a curving road with a drop behind the shoulder, using cameras alone.
• Courtesy as a policy. Yielding is not a traffic-rule checkbox; it is negotiation with another human driver who may not expect a robot to be polite.
• No lane markings to lean on. The road's edge is defined by rock and air, not paint.

Context

FSD (Supervised) launched in Slovenia in September 2026 as one of the first European rollouts after regulatory approval. The Mangart footage spread beyond the usual Tesla circles precisely because it is unglamorous: no stunts, just a car being patient on a cliff road — the boring kind of competence that autonomy actually needs.

The full video is on X. The reel version with narration is on our channels.

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Sources: original footage — Jan Skočaj on X · Endrit Restelica's LinkedIn write-up · Instagram coverage · Tesla Insider coverage