DrivingBench: GPT-6 Astra is the first frontier LLM to complete a cone course driving a real Toyota Corolla
DrivingBench, published around Sept 23, 2026 by Aditya Ramabadran, Simon Mahns and Tobias Gessler, gives frontier LLMs out-of-the-box control of a real Toyota Corolla's steering, accelerator and brakes through tool calls and scores them on a fixed cone course. GPT-6 Astra finished the course (5 min 22 s, on its second attempt); Claude Fable 5.1, Grok 4.6 and GPT-5.6 Sol reached only 6–11% of the course.
Key facts
- Setup: models control steering, accelerator and brakes of a Toyota Corolla via tool calls; up to three attempts per model in one continuous conversation; ranked by best attempt
- GPT-6 Astra: 49% progress then a collision on attempt 1; 100% in 5:22 on attempt 2
- Other models (Claude Fable 5.1, Grok 4.6, GPT-5.6 Sol): at most 6–11% progress, mostly DNF
- Very low speeds for safety; latency was 'one of the biggest issues'; each tool output carries a timestamp so the model can learn its own latency in context (authors on HN)
- Authors call it 'just sort of a fun benchmark ... probably not actually practical any time soon'
- Per HN discussion the course is ~135 m and the Astra run cost roughly $8 in API tokens (not stated on the site)
What happened
A three-person team wired a production car to an LLM tool interface and asked general-purpose models, without driving-specific training, to steer around cones. Only GPT-6 Astra finished. The site does not give a run date; the date here is the HN post.
Why it matters
A small but vivid probe of general models' embodied, closed-loop control. It shows a jump between model generations, and also how far such models are from real-time driving.
Changelog
- 2026-09-30: created (sweep 2026-09-29, HN 316 points)
Related events
- OpenAI releases GPT-6 Astra, its first GPT-6 model ★★★★★
- Anthropic releases Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1 ★★★★★
Sources (2)
- officialDrivingBench
- discussionHacker News: GPT-6 Astra has gained the ability to drive a car (316 points)
id: 2026-09-23-drivingbench-llms-drive-real-car · updated 2026-09-30 · open in the interactive timeline