Is it 100% perfect? Of course not. But this article is the ultimate in low effort. A person who felt that the car might hit another one but probably not. Yes, real value there.
What’s low effort in sharing your personal experience? It’s very clearly written as an opinion.
Any reader would be reasonable to assume that there are other opinions out there, and that this opinion may be in the minority.
That said, I’m happy to see a dissenting opinion in the comments here! Would be curious to see others thoughts in the sudden appearance of a free trial.
I find it extremely biased and lacking in substance.
I get it though... Elon does deserve a lot of hate so I guess the HN crowd is gleefully cheering out of schadenfreude whenever someone says something along the lines of "Tesla bad".
I hate to break it to you, but that's going to be a lot of people. He's made himself extremely hateable by the general public.
From my experience working in this space though, judging quality is extremely difficult. For one thing, different people have different criteria. I've taken rides with other people where we all had different opinions on the quality of the ride at the end. These systems (FSD especially), can also be highly sensitive to specific details of the situation. Two drives in apparently similar conditions have meaningfully different behavior because the system understands them differently. It's very difficult to compare apples to apples outside statistics and simulation.
All this is to say: don't dismiss feelings or intuition about the danger. These are good caution signs and talking about them can help companies improve the product.
I will tell you straight up that a Tesla model Y on FSD 12.3.3 is a safer vehicle operator than a human being using a phone. Period. No qualifications. Under all circumstances.
With every new release of FSD, there are people quick to say it's a breakthrough, and amazing, while others lament it doesn't nearly do what it says on the lid.
Why are we putting safety critical systems we can’t adequately measure on our streets?! There are people who confidently state that Tesla's FSD is already better than humans.
Where's the data?! Why isn't it open? Why can't we build an objective measure for effectiveness and safety of each of these releases?
I'd love to see all cars (including Waymo) compete on a standard set of tests with clear gates as to what conditions they'd be allowed to go to Levels 3, 4 or 5.
As an unrelated aside, measuring safety performance is hard. Doing it accurately without putting vehicles on the street is probably impossible. Simulation is not a fully adequate replacement for road testing and many companies are already looking at cutting the latter because of the expense. It'd be nice for regulators to outline an acceptable road test framework that better balances the goal of public safety from unsafe vehicles against ensuring safety can be demonstrated in real world environments.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto...
Of course Tesla is not participating - the real numbers would make them look disastrous.
Regarding objective measures for the quality - the famous standards for level 1-5 etc. Objectively speaking, Tesla's system is Level 2. There are other companies at level 3, and some others operating fully autonomous vehicles.
As to why Tesla chooses to base all their claims on purely subjective and highly cherry-picked numbers and videos ? We all know the answer to this question.
Which I'm happy with. I do 95% of driving on Autopilot already. Add another 4% for FSD that I'm happy to babysit and I'd be very happy.
For some reason people are so caught up on naming choice and what it implies...
I find it fascinating that a guy become the richest person in the world, by convincing 'investors' that a Level 2 system is 'almost ready' for a Robotaxi operation and will make them infinite money. To give him credit, he also did mention that Tesla is worthless if it doesn't solve FSD.
Considering you are putting your life, that of your family and everyone on the street around you in the hands of this software, I don't get the nonchalant "sure, it's not perfect" attitude like you were trying out the beta version of a new note taking app. It absolutely has to be 100% perfect before being allowed on the streets.
How about hardware? Is it all 100% safe? IIRC USA doesn't even require yearly warrant of fitness / MOT.
Are the roads perfectly designed and in perfect conditions? How about weather? Do you stop driving when there's blizzard outside?
Hell, I'd argue they shouldn't be able to call it that legally.
Is a “garbage disposal” a device that can dispose of all garbage in your sink? No, all it can handle is light food scraps. But the inventor named it a “garbage disposal” not a “light food waste processing device.”
To me it seems stupid that so much of the debate after all these years is about the name. I think we are beyond the point where the name matters.
I wouldn’t.
A self driving system that only works during good weather is still useful and has non-zero value.
If you want to use an arbitrary name, use one, if you pick a descriptive name and don't do as described, it's just false advertising.
Again, I just think that marketing is marketing and everyone knows that. Everyone knows that a trash bag isn’t indestructible and that a paper towel can’t absorb a tsunami.
Especially for a device that has health impacts.
Typically the FTC regulates truth in advertising by (1) Is it an unequivocal statement? & (2) Does it have a health impact?
Driving is a very personal activity. There are nearly infinitely many variables driving every decision during every drive, and the default experience that people will want from something like this is "someone that mostly drives like me and never makes mistake because computers".
FSD is not that. It will be a while before it is that. Until then, I can totally understand someone "never using this again" (for a while) over a few fumbles that FSD made that they would not have (in most cases).
Tesla has to know this because they also know that if even 10k Tesla buyers decide to subscribe to FSD, that's an extra $2M/month that can be (mostly) shoveled back into training infrastructure!
If anything, FSDs are over-cautious and slow down to well below speed limits if they can't make out conditions. So, yes I'd say other drivers shouldn't complain about a system that still requires a human to constantly pay attention and keep their hands on the wheel.
It makes driving a lot more relaxing in a way that you don't appreciate until you get used to it. My feet are off the pedals and can stretch, I don't have to steer so my attention is only partly on the road ( the interior camera monitors to see if you're looking ahead and not on your phone for example ) If I have to change the music I don't have to worry about the car in front of me suddenly braking etc.
I've been using FSD for years now at day and night and I think it's been ready for Level 3 going straight on Interstates/highways for a while now. The latest update significantly improves taking turns along a route.
I commented on this thread elsewhere that I wish there was a standard suite of requirements for all automakers to certify the self-driving levels on their cars. Otherwise, I feel too much of the discussion is being polluted by people who agree or disagree with Elons politics.
I hope you don't hurt someone.
At daytime or ar night?
What about the weather conditions?
Depreciation is a normal and expected part of buying a car. If you are financing a car you should be prepared to keep it for a long period of time. While many automakers offer car loans of 5+ years, ideally you should only finance a car for 3 or 4 years and/or put more money down to ensure you are never underwater.
At no point did the author say that the car didn’t do its job as a reliable piece of transportation, but somehow it was a “financial mistake.”
The fact that cars depreciate and cost too much is a feature of all cars.
The problem is that Tesla owners are spoiled. I bought my Model Y just before the supply crunch in June of 2021, and within a year used models were selling for 20% more than I paid. They've since come down a ton as demand levelled off, but even now my car has depreciated only about 18% (including inflation!) from the cost of a brand new Y with the same configuration.
It's easy enough to imagine a young Tesla buyer over the last few years getting a very weird picture of the financials of owning a car.
What Tesla did, which historically is not a "normal and expected part of buying a car", is repeatedly slash list pricing after launch, thus meaning the used market does not trust valuing them, as so many used car dealers got very badly burned on inventory they paid too high a price for when the new car prices came down, putting them all underwater.
These aren't small or predictable market moves either; they are random swings. The Model S and Model X have been reduced new by as much as 24% at times. This Simply Does Not Happen at most car companies, most of the time, and residuals are more stable as a result.
Imagine you had just taken stock of a used model S, valuing it based on purchase price "n", then tomorrow the manufacturer slashes the price of a new one by 24%. That's very, very hard not to end up underwater.
Similarly, for existing owners - that 24% cut has just shifted the depreciation curve massively, and not in your favor. Existing owners frankly have every right to be pissed.
+ Parts availability woes
In short, buying a Tesla is a terrible decision from a financial perspective.
Maybe from a fun or cool perspective!
But if you're interested in maintaining $-value-over-time, there are much better options (Corollas, Accords, Tacomas, Subarus, etc).
lol, walk me through the process at Maserati.
If residuals plummet too much, their lease accounting can go red too. Lease rates have to account for a future predicted value of the vehicle, and manufacturers strangely like making money on leases.
Also, the huge depreciation on a Maserati isn't a surprise, most of the time. A mass produced vehicle selling in the hundreds of thousands annually seeing double digit list price shifts at random did come as a surprise, and has put car dealers underwater on Tesla inventory before.
Because those are two things that Tesla is doing that nobody else is doing at all or very well.