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Comment by vtail | Hacker News Reader

I'm reading all the comments criticizing FSD, and I honestly feel like we watch two different movies. My Tesla drives me from home to work, or from work to a downtown restaurant (granted, all within Silicon Valley where they probably have most of the data), mostly without my involvement. With the latest version, the car is occasionally too hesitant, and - very rarely - confused (e.g. by a railroad traffic light next to a road), but that doesn't subtract much from the experience.

I don't know of any other driving assist system that get anywhere close to this. Every time I tried fancy rental cars (BMWs, Audis, Mercedes) with the latest and greatest driver assist, it's feels like a joke.

What am I missing?

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There's a lot of confusion and people talking past each other about the difference between Autopilot, Enhanced Autopilot, the Full Self Driving option package, the feature called Full Self Driving beta, and the promised (but not delivered!) feature that will allow you to not pay attention, also called Full Self Driving. I think many people aren't aware of which is which and where and how they made promises about each.

Here is how Tesla describes the differences: https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot

Notably, they don't even talk about FSD beta there.

Thanks - that might indeed be the case. What I'm referring to in my original comment is FSD Beta, which drives mostly by itself but requires constant driver attention (hands on the wheel, eyes on the road).

FWIW my assessment of the state of the situation as someone who has a Model Y with FSD beta:

- Regular Autopilot which comes standard on all Teslas has not been updated meaningfully in several years, presumably because they will replace it with a limited version of FSD when they are confident enough. This system has some number of bugs with false slowdowns, but is generally reliable. Limited utility because you just stay in your lane, but nice in traffic. I would not be surprised if another automaker had something a little better at the moment, but I think Tesla will be able to stay ahead here once the updates get rolling again.

- It's okay for them to sell you an expensive package that promises to software update you to self driving where you don't pay attention if they ever figure it out. If you want to gamble your money on that, why not.

- It's okay to have a driver assistance system that requires you to pay attention to the road, even if it's not fully reliable. It's the same logic as cruise control. If you incorrectly operate your vehicle, you might crash. But we still say it's okay.

- There have been no fatalities or (notable?) crashes on FSD beta

- There have been some smallish number fatalities on Autopilot, but you are expected to pay attention, not be drunk, etc. It is not a safety risk over driving manually, and is almost certainly safer. If you are paying attention, which you must be in all cases.

- The latest FSD beta has the most advanced features of any carmaker, no question. It can do stoplights, stop signs, turns, roundabouts, highway onramps and offramps, navigation, obstacle avoidance, works day and night and in a degraded capacity in rain etc.

- The latest FSD beta is pretty good on the highway, significantly better than regular Autopilot due to the three years of improvements. Lane changes are smooth. It very rarely makes a safety critical mistake. It occasionally misses an exit or optimal lane change, especially if the lane is backed up with traffic and your lane is moving much faster.

- The latest FSD beta is not reliable at all on surface streets. I have had less than five intervention-free drives, probably like three. I have had hundreds of drives or more with it. It can be expected to make many uncomfortable maneuvers on surface streets, such as being extremely timid around stop signs or people or cars it thinks may enter the road, and will often slow or route around in a very uncomfortable manner. It is generally not comfortable to use this with other people in the car, especially if they don't know how it behaves. (Again, this is all surface streets)

- It is more stressful to drive on surface streets with FSD than not, currently.

- It is not generally difficult to detect a bad or unsafe maneuver and correct the car. You pretty much always are focused on what it's doing and an errant behavior is immediately notable and you can either tap the brake, hold or move the wheel, or tap the stalk to disengage, depending on how urgent the situation is.

- I don't think relying on camera vision for this feature is a significant issue. Maybe that will have trouble in heavy rain or snow, but I think it's sufficient for most situations. I won't be too upset if it self drives most of the time but not when it rains. I still think that would be pretty cool.

- I don't know if the current FSD computer is fast enough, or if the cameras are good enough resolution or dynamic range. They may be, Tesla claims the next generation FSD "v12" uses significantly less processing power. I think they're highly motivated to engineer it to work. But if they can't, I think they would bite the bullet and replace the cameras and/or computer. They already collected enough money from you to pay for it, so they'd rather do that than have everyone class action them.

- I think they technically could get to get to some kind of Level 3 where you don't have to pay attention on the highway in less than 1 year. I don't know if they will, but I think it has a path to being reliable enough.

- I will be very surprised if they can get to Level 3 on surface streets within 2-3 years. The "v12" version looks like a promising technical direction, but it remains to be seen what that looks like. All bets are off on the timeline on this.

- I'm happy with my purchase in 2020, it is fun to watch the technology evolve. New buyers should not buy FSD beta access at the current price, but use the subscription option to test it out as things develop.

What is the point of that? Isn't that even worse than just driving the car yourself? It sounds like being a driving instructor with a student that doesn't listen and you don't get paid.

When reliable, like on the highway, it's much better. On city streets its a beta. As it gets more reliable, it will become better than driving yourself. Then eventually you won't have to pay attention, the benefits of which are obvious. Maybe it won't happen, but it clearly has a point.

No, I mean what's the point of turning on autonomous driving mode if you have to keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road at all times? That's worse than actually driving the car yourself.

Not having to constantly apply a ton of micro-corrections for keeping the speed, keeping the car centered, slowing down to cars in front, ... takes away a TON of mental fatigue, even if you're still supervising.

Over time you learn the 1-2 situations where the car potentially messes up and you increase vigilance, otherwise highways are usually a smooth ride.

The first time I took the trip to my parents in my Tesla, I almost did the entire trip without stopping (~300km), whereas with my old car, which had no assistance systems at all, I would have to stop after 1h from being too tired already (Switzerland has lots of speed limit changes and frequent traffic jams near the weekends).

>>> Not having to constantly apply a ton of micro-corrections for keeping the speed, keeping the car centered, slowing down to cars in front, ... takes away a TON of mental fatigue, even if you're still supervising.

you are describing adaptive cruise.

It’s actually way better. You basically just are monitoring for mistakes. It really is less taxing.

I personally consider it more dangerous as this less attention required breeds complacency which may inevitably result in me not being able to intervene when the it makes a mistake.

As opposed to being alert all time when one is driving.

It's almost like they intentionally picked these names to make them sound like far more than they actually are, and that's made it difficult for consumers to understand what they're getting...

Maybe. I don't care what the names are. I think they're a bit too confusing. I'm sure they generated hype.

I don't think people who actually purchased the vehicle are confused about what they purchased. Essentially no owner of the car thinks their Tesla can drive without them paying attention. If you did, you could probably just return the car because it would be extremely obvious it does not drive itself. I think people who have only heard other people talk about or news articles which don't always get the details right are fairly confused.

It's called "Full Self Driving" and you are touting that it is better than vehicles with "driver assist".

I was partly responding to this comment: "Their software feels years behind what most cars have these days.".

I think it's the other way around - the best software offered by conventional manufacturers (the best they can offer) is years behind Tesla's.

Maybe that comment was referring to like cruise or waymo?

"what most cars have these days" (emphasis mine)

Indeed, but many words these days have lost their standard meaning.

Not enough that false advertising shouldn't get called out.

"Open"AI

"Hacker" news.

Self driving does not equal unsupervised driving (the phrase is not synonymous with autonomous driving). The same way that cruise control doesn't mean the car controls the cruising with no supervision.

Ok?

What you’re missing are other people’s experiences. I completely believe your experience. I also agree FSD is fucking amazing compared to anything we’ve seen before.

However, driving in Houston, my Tesla would seemingly get in an accident nearly every single time I drive if I didn’t do something to correct. And at minimum it will do something stupid every single trip that causes a missed turn or exist that adds 5-10 minutes of driving. I would every single encounter it has around pedestrians on streets (no sidewalks in many parts of Houston) would have it wayyyy too close and going wayyyy to fast and make the pedestrian think I’m a huge careless asshole. There’s tons of other anecdotes, like it almost drive one of the wheels into a ditch (there’s tons of them in Houston). I would literally be hitting someone or something every single week if I blindly trusted FSD, and would an hour of pointless drive time every week too

Thank you for sharing your experience. It’s totally believable that FSD experience is very uneven across the country. Hopefully they will keep improving the system.

Yeah, sounds like my Model S Plaid. Phenomenal performance, but autopilot is a joke.

I am dumbfounded every time I hear someone saying that their FSD is great, and that it doesn’t occasionally try to kill them or someone else. Frankly, I just don’t believe those stories.

This. The reason I stopped using FSD was due to traveling at speed on the biggest freeway running through Southern California when it randomly slammed on the breaks for no reason, until I quickly disengaged it. I’m not talking a gentle slow down. It went from 75 to 35 and all passengers getting thrown against their seatbelts and the car behind having to slam on their breaks hard to avoid rear ending me. First time, I thought it was a fluke. 2nd time, along the same route but a completely different place, the car behind had to swerve into the emergency lane to avoid running into me. I vowed never to use it again and join any class action lawsuit against the company regarding this. It’s dangerous AF on its best day.

Driver assist, however, is actually great and perfect for stop and go traffic. But damn that FSD is a literal killer.

I think what’s missing is what the software allows. It could be BMW/Merc etc are way more conservative on what the allow the system to do and when they force the driver to take over. In certain contexts Merc is actually willing to assert and stand by a higher level of autonomy than any other manufacturer: (https://www.motortrend.com/news/mercedes-benz-drive-pilot-le...). Taking that at face value it’s possible they can do it and choose not to because they don’t want the liability. Whatever systems are in regular cars are then either borked or deliberately have less hardware.

Tesla is uniquely risk tolerant for better or worse. You also don’t hear about people getting into accidents in a BMW on self driving because they don’t make the same claims and have tons of safeguards.

The Mercedes thing is bullshit.

> Mercedes says that Drive Pilot will only operate during daylight hours at speeds up to 40 mph on “suitable freeway sections and where there is high traffic density.”

> While the system is active, drivers must keep their faces visible to the vehicle’s in-car cameras at all times, but can turn their head to talk to a passenger or play a game on the vehicle’s infotainment screen. Drivers can’t crawl into the back seat to take a nap, for instance. The system will disengage if the driver’s face is obscured or an attempt is made to block access to the in-car cameras. Presumably the system will deactivate itself if it detects the driver is sleeping or operating the car while impaired.

<40 mph, specific freeways only, does not make any kind of lane change or exit autonomously. I think any carmaker with a decent off-the-shelf lane keeping feature could make a liability claim in this scenario. It's not a measure of the technology.

It’s basically just useful for traffic jams…which isn’t bad idea. Most cars with smart cruise control could easily do something like this. I guess Mercedes is just adding a layer of security (driver’s face must show) and are then enabling it?

It's not a bad idea. I just think Mercedes has been very clever at ginning up a "Level 3" "self-driving" feature out of commodity lane keeping systems, restricted use cases, and a cheap legal liability waiver that will almost never come into play.

Maybe any automaker could take liability too, maybe not. It's all just words in the wind until they actually do it. Mercedes put their money where their mouth is and I respect them for it. It's the opposite of bullshit.

As long as you clearly understand what they are actually taking liability for, and what the capabilities of their system are, feel however you like.

IMO it's a misleading marketing tactic to position themselves competitively as having any kind of self-driving technology by recognizing that you can play games with the SAE levels to make the system sound impressive.

"SAE Level 3 DRIVE PILOT

It initiates a radical paradigm shift that permits the vehicle to take over the dynamic driving task under certain conditions in heavy traffic or congestion situations on suitable sections of freeway currently up to a speed of 60 km/h. This ultimate luxury experience enables customers to win back precious time when in the car through relaxation or productivity. For instance, they can communicate with work colleagues via in-car office tools, write messages and emails via the head unit, browse the internet or just sit back, relax and watch a movie." [1]

I'm confused where you see the opportunity for any ambiguity or misunderstanding. Even the name "SAE Level 3 DRIVE PILOT" tells you the limitations. If you want misleading, look at what Tesla's pulling with their "Full Self Driving".

In the end, users only care about what a feature enables them to do, not how impressive the tech behind it is. Being able to relax and watch a movie while sitting in busy traffic is a great value proposition.

P.S. Found a good article on it: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/mercedes-benzs-level-3-...

[1] https://group.mercedes-benz.com/innovation/case/autonomous/d...

I don't think it's worth discussing this any further together.

> What am I missing?

That it could potentially kill you at any time.

That you've convinced yourself of its safety based on your lone experience doesn't detract from all the other evidence that strongly suggests that the system is not safe.

Honest question, really - what do you actually like about it? I get that it's an amazing technological feat; it must be really wild to see your car just Knight Rider itself along. But... It's not like you can actually focus on other things, right? Is it really less stressful than just driving yourself there?

it is fun to watch the technology grow and morph- especially on the same daily route. it’s also nice to have as an alternative to a knee when you need to do something awkward, like reach back or sneeze. there is always the heart attack scenario but overall i definitely trust it to drive for a short stint and to know it’s there to grab the wheel if i get in a bind. on the highway it is excellent and really takes micro stresses out of a long drive. lane keeping is maybe 90% of it so i would weight this pretty low as a differentiator from other automaker offerings. still, i never had it on the car i came from- so it’s hard to sift that out of my impression.

I often engage it on city streets, esp. when I’m tired, because it does reduce the stress of driving for me.

Last winter, when I was driving a lot on Spain highways, I really missed something like FSD or even a simpler Autopilot in my rental car.

Yeah, I have been driven to an airport in Boston without intervention. It’s like magic and only seems to be getting better based on videos posted every update.

Can you share AP hardware version?

Not the grandparent, but I have Tesla Model 3 2019 with HW version 3.

The driver assist in my BMW is great, not sure what you're on about.

https://youtu.be/7M-J3JydpPA

Tesla's "FSD" is nice in California I'm sure.

If they'd have called it some marketing thing like "SuperCruise" or "HyperDrive" as opposed to "Full Self Driving" and "Autopilot," we probably wouldn't be having this conversation.

I suspect US owners may have more advanced self-driving features available than e.g. UK owners.

As someone who immediately deactivates most Tesla features whenever I rent one I’d like to understand what’s the allure of FSD in particular?

Do you feel like you are able to read HN while on the road or are you keeping “check” on the driving? If so, what have you won?

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