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Comment by chroma | Hacker News Reader

I bought a Model 3 back in 2020 and got the self-driving option mostly on a whim. Until recently, it was a handy feature on freeways but a gimmick on surface streets. Ever since the update a couple months ago, it actually does drive itself. I can't remember the last time I intervened. If I did, it was probably to make the car do something dangerous or technically in violation of traffic laws, as you have to be aggressive sometimes in city driving.

You also have people like John Carmack saying, "I have made multiple two hour drives without touching the wheel." His main complaint is that the car makes him touch the steering wheel if he's wearing sunglasses (because it can't track his eyes to determine whether he's paying attention).

I don't think owners will rent out their cars as taxis any time soon, but the technology really does seem to be there.

1. https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1814687334366912530

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The technology really isn't there. Individuals' subjective experience of safety is totally irrelevant when you're talking about a system as huge as "automobile travel."

Even 99.999% reliable miles is still dangerous at 3.2 trillion miles per year

I did not have the same experience with the free trial. It tried to crash in to curbs, and really drives in ways that make you think it isn't really planning very far ahead: driving towards parked cars and swerving at the last second instead of making an early correction to move over in the lane slightly, driving too fast for conditions, hard braking at stop signs, stopping very early, or very late for stop signs. This is in addition to all the other bad behavior: getting confused about where lanes are and blaring the alarm sound, taking no regard for other cars when merging, trouble following curves smoothly and respecting limit lines.

Curious because I don’t have the Tesla but have been impressed by city driving in YouTube videos in SF (I think it’s the beta version).

When did you have the free trial and where was this experience?

It was a couple months ago, whenever the free trial for everyone was. Bay Area peninsula suburbs. The neighborhoods that Tesla engineers live and drive in frequently.

We must have the old version in Australia because we bought extended autopilot for our 2024 M3 Highland and it drives for about 10 seconds before drifting into the left or right adjacent lanes and making everyone nervous.

And it tried to kill me on the freeway when it pretended it was going to merge and then just kept driving straight into the gutter.

In fact I have been thinking about asking for a refund because it is LESS capable than our 2020 Corolla’s adaptive cruise.

Really crappy situation to be waiting for someone to fix software that you paid for. If EAP is actually OK overseas, why don’t we have it here??

In Australia, self-driving features beyond lane keeping are banned, and lane keeping is limited to imparting a maximum lateral acceleration of 3 meters per second squared. Because of these restrictions, all Teslas in Australia are using a gimped version of autopilot from 2-3 years ago.

I figured. That sucks.

Well if two people say it on the Internet without providing any documentation, evidence or references to larger-scale reports, that sure proves the claim, doesn't it?

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