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Comment by mg | Hacker News Reader

I think a good indicator if it is useful or not is to look at how much it is actually used.

Tesla published a chart of cumulative miles driven over time on page 8 of their latest quarterly update:

https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/...

So far, I'm not sure what to make of it. The chart looks somewhat exponential. But since they brought more and more cars onto the road, one would expect exponential growth in this chart even if no additional usage was caused by software improvements. So one would have to un-cumulate the chart and then divide the y-axis by number of cars on the road to get usage by car.

And then one would have to factor in price changes.

I think the spike at the right is from the free trial they pushed out shortly after the release of FSD 12. The way I read the chart, the release of FSD 12 itself has not caused an increase in usage.

Does anybody know what caused the increase in growth in March 2023?

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Around then they rolled out a change that I hate, which was to remove cruise control and replace it with self-driving. Previously “one tap” was cruise, two was self-drive. Now it’s right into self-drive. I assume that increased hours significantly.

So for the real idea of how things are going, we would need a graph of also the total cruise miles (for FSD enabled Teslas). But this change was definitely done in order to get more easy miles for FSD testing, not UX.

It’s also not an accident that the trial went live shortly before Q2 numbers. Eager to see how the graph looks like in the next report (or if it is omitted completely).

They just changed the assignments of what tapping the right stalk once vs twice does -- before, once brought you into cruise control and twice into autopilot. After the change, that order is reversed by default, but you can change that from the settings.

Oh? I only rarely drive my wife’s Tesla but that’s excellent to know, thank you!

I use FSD a lot and generally like and feel less stressed and safer. For me, since I dive mostly the same roads a lot, I know which roads and intersections FSD can handle correctly and which ones it can't, so I use it where it works and don't use it where it doesn't. I've personally had a pretty big increase in use over the last year because it's just plain getting so much better. It works in places now where it didn't before.

I wonder if those Vegas loop Tesla use FSD? Or if the Teslas being tested in parking lots count as FSD miles. Didn't Tesla game their range numbers? Didn't Musk say "we could've gamed our demos, but we actually didn't!" for their city to city demo? Also notable they released a 30 day free trial so it makes sense to see an uptick

Well if their sales grow exponentially you might be correct, but I’m not sure that’s the case.

I’ve seen some pretty impressive videos on this channel: https://youtube.com/@aidrivrclips?si=dYOXOhn5cdGDpWmh

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