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Comment by powerbroker | Hacker News Reader

I'm not buying FSD. The non-FSD features in the car are way too unpolished. If Tesla can't get the easy stuff right, there is no hope for the more complex. Some issues I've noted:

1. Voice recognition fails to match the stated operation described in the manuals since 2019;

2. Cameras are unable to reliably distinguish traffic signals, namely red; yellow; and green, using 2018 camera hardware; and

3. It makes absolutely no sense for the battery to 'brick' or declare 'out-of-range' while regeneration is adding charge back to the battery -- which is how the Model S behaved in 2020. In other words, as the car nears '0 range' or low/no charge, it absolutely should not shut down while kinetic energy is being converted to charge as the car slows down.

Based on may 5 years of experience driving two Teslas, I can't imagine this 'FSD problem' being solved prior to 2026.

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I don't think it's a Tesla problem, ultimately.

I look at it this way. Every day I plug in my Android phone to my car and use the navigation. I think it's the best option out there.

However, it's far from perfect. For instance, it frequently wants me to turn left on to a busy street from a side street with no traffic light. There are many other issues which aren't that big a deal because I'm in control. Sometimes it gets quite weird. One time my location was displaced like a block and a half, scrambling the directions.

Even while acknowledging I'm ignorant of 99.9% of the research and what's being done, there is a simple equation that I believe in - a nigh-on perfect navigation system must precede self-driving. If nobody knows how to walk, running isn't going to happen.

I don't have to know what people are doing in private to know that what they are doing in public isn't consistent with the aspirations.

> I don't think it's a Tesla problem, ultimately

Idk, I don't see any other companies claiming to have "full self-driving" at a time when that clearly doesn't exist and likely isn't possible right now

The only people claiming Tesla has full self driving are internet commenters who are mistakenly confusing things.

Tesla does not claim to have full self driving. They claim to be working on the technology and they have a beta of an early version of it. A beta of a thing is not the thing.

> Based on may 5 years of experience driving two Teslas, I can't imagine this 'FSD problem' being solved prior to 2026.

It's very optimistic estimate. It's been already more than 5 years already since Tesla declared FSD a solved problem AND started selling it.

To Tesla's credit, they are building a simulation environment, 'dojo', which, theoretically, will modify driving environments to include varying visibility, temperatures, precipitation, jay-walkers, windshield occlusions (bird-crap)... which was not in their toolkit 5 years ago.

5-years is a glacial age in a software development environment... so 5 years I'll say it could happen (30-45% chance), with maybe 10% chance earlier, and 45% in year 6 or later.

5 years isn't that long, software notwithstanding, when it comes to life-critical systems in the physical world.

5 years may seem like a glacial age if you're 25 years old. When you're 50 it seems like a month sometimes.

5 years with things like FSD seems to me the timeframe from when it is actually ready to allow on roads after all safety checks and proofs.

> 3. It makes absolutely no sense for the battery to 'brick' or declare 'out-of-range' while regeneration is adding charge back to the battery

Wait so how often are you in this situation? Like one ever 1000 drives? Or am I missing something?

Happened [1] after 1250 (or so) drives. As seems to happen in these situations, I got very close to the supercharger. So close, that I convinced a passerby and a policeman to push my car the remaining 200 yards to the charger.

Not going to do that again... heh. I sold my S70D.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28629060

Well don't let your car run so low. Same thing applies to ICE engines.

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