Personally, I bought FSD because I wanted to test it, not because I thought it would be robotaxi-level anytime soon. And also because I believe that Tesla will one day be forced to give free camera and computer upgrades to everyone that purchased FSD (on top of the HW3 upgrade I already got), because the current in-car cameras and computers are not enough to implement what they promised.
I don't see how it's worth $1. Do you trust the system to properly gauge the speed of a vehicle accelerating to pass you? If not then you need hands and eyes at the ready.
The bmw system costs $2k Canadian.
A comparison between Tesla self driving and bmw, bmw seems superior.
Tesla has spent so much time focused on going to level 5 that other manufacturers had plenty of time to catch up.
Tesla always has something just around the corner that's "better", and they get full credit for it as if already exists. Like their robot tapping into a multi-trillion market.
I was quite happy with my old Mobileye equipped i3. It never got updated though.
According to Forbes it is Mobile until 20225 when the full lineup will switch to Qualcomm.[1]
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2022/03/11/bmw-qu...
I drive the car 100% manually now. I don't even use cruise control it's that bad. $60K on a car that doesn't even have usable cruise control is disappointing.
My experiences with FSD tell me that it will never fulfill its promises and I'm just out $10K. Some other manufacturer maybe could do it, but not Tesla under its current leadership.
I'm hoping Lucid can pick up the mantle where Tesla left off.
This is called "specific performance" [1] and it is extremely rare for courts to compel fulfilling a contract when the standard approach of monetary damages will suffice. At the very worst case scenario for Tesla, they could be forced to refund those upgrades or even buy back the cars. One big way specific performance is used is if someone contracts to transfer real estate or infrastructure to be used as part of a bigger development project, but tries to pull out. Or if a subcontractor partially fulfills their duties as part of a bigger project, but is holding up key components.
Imagine someone has contracted with a tax accountant to help them respond to an audit. The contract says the client can fire the accountant and end the relationship at any time. The contract also says that if the client fires the accountant, they must pay $1000, and once payment is received, the accountant will transfer all records to the client within 24 hours.
The client fires the accountant and writes a check for $1000. The accountant refuses to take the check and refuses to transfer the files. A court might order specific performance that the accountant must fulfill the terms of the contract. This kind of issue is easy for courts to mandate specific performance, it is pretty straightforward to determine if the files have been transferred or not. The client faces monetary damages for sure if they don't get the files to give to their new accountant. But monetary damages aren't really a good way to make the wrong right.
But assuming a court sides against Tesla, what is the most commonsense remedy to make the wrong right? Refund the sales of a product that was not as advertised, or force the company to make the product into what was advertised? Courts don't have the kind of expertise or understanding of what is technically possible in future technology development.
Also I paid $3k for FSD.
Ok but that's not what Elon ever sold, even once, even a little bit.
He's promised full self-driving is one year away for each of the last nine years. [1]
So I'm happy you paid a huge sum of money to beta test a product on a completely unrealistic timeline, but that's not going to suffice for most customers. I have to imagine that many, if not most, people took the company at their word.
[edit] Here's a compilation video. [2]
[1] https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-promises-full-self-driving-ne...
I will definitely bookmark this as a nice replacement for "lying".
Consider that in the past plenty of other people in the industry have underestimated things that he's overestimated, such as the potential for reusable rockets, and the timeline for electric cars becoming viable, and the timeline for low-cost phased array antennas to support Starlink. And those have been incredible success stories for him, despite his initial overestimation, which really was overestimation, that many called stupid at the time, with some justification. And AI may yet turn out that way too. Even if he's wildly optimistic about timelines, he may still end up closer to correct than the conservative establishment in the industry which has a very strong status quo bias, like with disposable rockets and internal combustion engines.
Whether he believes it or not doesn't mean jack. You are still out several thousand dollars for something that doesn't work.
I bet Liz Holmes really truly thought Theranos products were going to work too.
Funny how Tesla is able to pull this off. I can't think of another brand that so easily gets people to throw large sums of money at it while expecting so little in return.
I wonder what percentage of Telsa car owners are also shareholders.
Nobody gives Toyota $6k for no good reason, but TM is not in the same league as TSLA.
While I didn't take advantage of it for self driving, or the iPhone (though I did buy the first one), I did for VR (backed the Oculus Rift Kickstarter and then made a career in VR) and deep learning (jumped in early and also made it part of my career) and Bitcoin (not part of my career, but still good).
I consider the cost of being an early adopter of things like FSD money well spent given the opportunities it can create for you. I think a lot of people are making money on YouTube simply recording themselves driving around with FSD Beta on.
And the videos with the most hits are the ones where it almost gets the driver or nearby drivers or pedestrians killed.
I have a hard time putting FSD in the same category as VR or the iPhone, because those can't kill you. When you bought your first iPhone, I would bet you had high hopes that it would be a nice project and do what it said it would do, in contrast to your admitted low expectations when you paid for FSD.
Also, FSD was $3k when I bought it, so that helps, and it came with a guaranteed computer upgrade too. I wouldn't pay the $15k it costs today.
Why can't the most advanced driving system park the car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsb2XBAIWyA
I'd say you've been suckered into doing Tesla's testing work for them. Worse than that, you're even paying them for the very great privilege of being an unpaid intern.
It's perverse. They advertised at you and I think we have to say the manipulation has worked.
Being an early adopter of technology always involves paying to test unfinished work. Even the first iPhone (which I also bought) was deficient in many ways. And yet being an early adopter has brought me personally a lot of benefits. The world is not zero sum, turns out.
So.. the most advanced driving system is so far ahead that it's years behind?
> Being an early adopter of technology always involves paying to test unfinished work.
It really doesn't.
The tech-bro -- basically us here -- crowd thinks that they're immune to marketing. But they get suckered in just as well as anyone, it's just a matter of playing to different preconceived notions.
I agree the hardware won't be enough, but I find more likely that the software will actually get available after your current car has passed its normal lifetime, and you'll have gotten rid of it already.
Well, and legitimately they are used for data collection to improve the system. This is integral to how they develop FSD.
(One of) the things that pisses me off about this is all through Tesla's marketing and website, the consistent undertone is that these are complete and working, but that much of EAP and FSD is "just awaiting regulatory approval", when that's far from the case.
Of course, it's very convenient for Tesla, too, if it never happens (and I think we are a decade or so at least from anything), they will just point blame away from themselves, ignoring that what they've offered would never reach the barrier for regulatory approval. And there will be the usual cries about the short sellers, and "big oil" pressure, rather than placing blame where it lies, Elon's cowboy-esque attitude to the whole thing.
Even ignoring any possibility of raising more capital, the amount of revenue recognized from FSD is much smaller than the financial hit that would have been required to bankrupt the company, at every point in time.
> Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that the carmaker was “about a month” from bankruptcy during the run-up in Model 3 production from mid-2017 to mid-2019
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/03/musk-tesla-was-about-a-month...
You're right, that never really appeared in the annual reports. So either Musk lied to CNBC, or the annual reports played down Tesla's actual position.
The car itself is wonderful. Driving a Tesla is a level beyond anything else I've owned.
Autopilot on freeways works great. I disagree that it's deceptive. The name is confusing to the average person (it sounds like it drives itself without help). But there are constant reminders that you need to pay attention and be ready to take over. Stupid people will be stupid. A name change wouldn't be the worst outcome, but it's a great feature.
Navigate on autopilot is not great. It's kind of useful, but makes dumb lane changes and is too timid in traffic to work. Being able to switch lanes with a turn signal is useful and I use it.
Auto park is garbage and only works on very easy parking spots. Half the time it doesn't even "detect" the spot and won't offer the option. It's also not that good at parking.
Summon (classic) is useful for me. I use it to move my car out of the way to take out the trash. It's cool and not dangerous, though not super useful.
Smart summon is dangerous and not useable. As a previous commenter said, it has serious "nervous raccoon energy" and either gets confused or nearly hits things.
Full self driving is not even close to ready. It's nowhere near what was promised (get in your car and it drives you from A to B). It's unclear to me that this is even possible with the vision hardware in the car. I like playing with it, but I've never had a successful drive without having to take over. This was massively overhyped, perpetually pushed out, and honestly I agree with the fraud case here.
I'm mostly annoyed that all the broken features have sat stagnant while the company works on FSD releases that incrementally improve something that's fundamentally not even close to working right.
I do not recommend people pay for summon/autopark/fsd/navigate. The basic autopilot is pretty good for highway driving and great that Tesla includes it free though. The simple summon is fun and works most of the time but not worth paying for.
okay then
The longest stretch I’ve used EAP for is >3 hrs going from MA to NY. Highways were totally smooth, did its own lane changes, etc.
It can be slightly jerky at times when the traffic keeps speeding up and slowing down sharply, that’s my only real complaint.
This is how you can tell who is a TSLA shareholder and who isn't.
Pucker factor influences any current-generation self-driving. I've given demos to friends in the passenger seat who have had such strong negative reactions that I've had to end the demo -- as in they want to reach over to grab the steering wheel to save our lives in mid-turn. This reaction isn't totally surprising; I've been in human-driven cars with people who simply cannot be a passenger because they're so jumpy.
It takes a leap of faith to let the car drive itself, but with that faith and the requisite attention, the experience is good.
No, it isn't. Do you think "student drivers" go around banging into things? Comparing the two is ridiculous and dishonest; FSD regularly gets fooled by things no human would ever be confused by.
=====
I took a shower since the first version of this comment, so the following edit is an actual shower thought about your comment.
If self-driving vehicles succeed, it will be because they're safer than human drivers. That's obvious. But we probably won't be able to cherry-pick an arbitrary driving metric and show that computers always beat humans. Computer drivers will be safer than humans, but they will make different kinds of mistakes. Instead of 40,000 humans dying in auto accidents each year in the US because of inattention, DUI, sleepiness, overreaction, or poor training, we'll have maybe 1,000 humans dying because of ridiculous computer behaviors. And that 1,000 probably won't be a subset of the 40,000; they'll be 1,000 completely different people.
That will seem weird. The 40,000 deaths feel like a natural part of life, but the 1,000 will feel like a grave injustice.
Yet my computer thinks 1 divided by 10 is 0.10000000000000001, and I still use it for arithmetic.
* automated lane change when you press indicator
* Summon (a google tells you all you need to know about how bad)
* Autopark (this has never worked on my model 3 either, aside from a handful of times. Again, common knowledge it doesn't work).
* Automated freeway exit selection
Otherwise, its the same pretty good lane-keep system they give you with the car as standard.
Of course, Tesla being Tesla I'm sure the feature set will change with time, so maybe you get more later? Tesla don't promise this though, and like all tech you should evaluate purchase on its features today, not its promises tomorrow? I might have missed something, but generally thats all it adds over the basic AP you got with the car, and it's quite clearly documented as such. I can certainly agree I'd feel sick too if I'd paid $6k for it in its current advertised form!
I use it all the time - it takes me to dentist, drives me home - every single drive. It actively monitors traffic lights when stopped & when it turns green - it chimes, blinking lights, yields, left turn yields, pedestrians, bicycles on the road, dogs and blind spots - all of it gets managed by the car with just 5-10% of my attention. It doesnt let me pickup my phone (I get a warning) or fiddle with spotify. I need to keep my hands and be active, but I am not anxious about blind spot checks or bicycles in the dark.
When it is released to the general public, it will be groundbreaking.
Is autopark that bad on the model 3? To parallel park I just pull past an open spot (to let the sonar sensors see the gap) and when the P symbol shows up, put it in reverse and press [Start] on the display. It usually parks better than I could especially with tight spots.
If Summon doesn’t work, try turning on Bluetooth on your phone.
Please update this review in a few years.
CIO was late to work, again, today because the Tesla no go. One thing after another. It's kind of ridiculous.
How much research did you do? Genuinely wondering.