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Comment by dbsmith83 | Hacker News Reader

> ...cited the apparent poor performance of what Tesla calls Full Self-Driving beta, a $10,000 option that gives owners advanced automated driving features and allows them to test cutting-edge autonomous technologies on public roads. (Beta is a software term that describes a product not quite ready for general sale to the public.)

Wait, does this mean people are actually paying extra money to become test dummies for this?

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Yes, Tesla owner here. When you buy you’re given the option to purchase “FSD” for $10k. All the caveats reveal that it’s not really FSD though, of course, and you’re essentially paying for these partial FSD features and are a part of the testing (like opting into iOS beta, for example).

You can go through the order flow on Teslas site and see this quickly.

People are paying to unlock advanced Autosteer features ($10k flat fee, or $199/mo) and a small subset of those are invited to the FSD Beta that enables these features on city streets in addition to highways

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29531598

yes. and also giving a whole lot of driving data to tesla for use in their insurance program and obviously to train their AI.

i’m one of them AMA

What are the use cases and often how do you use it? (reposting to everyone who says they're open to questions)

I find highway driving more relaxing using FSD. It will request lane changes appropriately and then I can just approve instead of having to constantly wonder which lane I should be in to make the exit in time. I have to take over quite often but on the whole it’s definitely made driving more enjoyable. So I use it almost every time on the highway. I bought it when it was 7k and at least half of my motivation was to see how it progressed (since I am in the AI field myself), which it has significantly since then.

What are the use cases and often how do you use it? (reposting to everyone who says they're open to questions)

yes, turns out "all our vehicle have the necessary hardware for full self driving" was another of the many boutades that aren't technically lies only because layers of fine print included and generous interpretations thereof from the Musk sycophants.

Edited to remove snarky reply of:

“No, you should do some basic research first.”

The FSD beta is no additional cost over the (currently) $10,000 package that adds additional AP capabilities and hardware upgrades. My computer was already upgraded for example.

You, too! https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> “No, you should do some basic research first.”

Why should I? I read the article and can ask/talk about it here--discussion is literally the point.

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