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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

For a split-second after reading the headline, I thought they were claiming FSD works.

It does work in driving the car where it is able to. Where it fails is in the 'full' part. After 10 billion miles driven on 'auto-pilot' [1] it is hard to claim it 'does not work'. Tesla would have been better off removing the 'F' from 'FSD' but that's water under the bridge.

[1] https://electrek.co/2026/05/03/tesla-fsd-10-billion-miles-no...

If we judge it as "Self Driving", it does the Driving part pretty well, and is quite bad at the Self part. There exist no roads and no weather conditions where I'm allowed to take my eyes off the road and stop being the safety nanny.

I liked this article's definition of Full Self Driving (Level 4 autonomy), it is very clear - when Tesla directly takes on the legal liability for unsupervised driving.

If they renamed it Featureless Sometimes Driving we might be onto something.

You just said "where it fails" and then state hard to claim it not working. If you call it Full Self Driving and it doesn't fully self drive, then it doesn't work. Not really sure where the confusion is. It's not water under the bridge. It is what it is. They claimed it would be fully self driving and not some lane/speed maintenance that pretty much all car makers can do now. It was straight up explained to drive the car. Any deviation from that means it is not working and people like you willingly accepting what Musk has lied about for years trying to make the rest of us out to be the weird ones for not falling for it. I'm tired of the gaslighting.

Exactly. It's like calling an airplane system "autopilot" but pilots are still involved.

> lane/speed maintenance that pretty much all car makers can do now

What car can I buy in the US today that's as good as the latest fsd?

Literally every non-budget brand (and even some of the budget brands) offers automatic lane keeping with traffic-aware cruise control somewhere in their fleet. It might only be on their flagship vehicles, and possibly only on the top trims, but you're living in a Tesla-decorated cave if you think those are still Tesla-only features.

On a Tesla, it's not even an FSD-specific feature. Autopilot does it.

FSD isn't basic ADAS. You could just say no.

So many cars come with lane assist and adaptive cruise control. You can google those terms for yourself. I don't bother with lmgtfy requests. You're a big boy/girl, and teaching you to fish it much better effort. They also don't cost an additional $10k on top of the price of the car. They are just part of the price of the car.

Maybe the lmgtfy would be a good exercise for you. Ford's BlueCruise, GM's SuperCruise, Rivian's Autonomy+, and Mercedes-Benz’s Drive Pilot all cost money.

Indeed and none of those work outside of (select) highways. Lucid also has DreamDrive, but it's fairly poor from what I've seen. BYD's God's Eye is in the news, and it isn't looking good either.

I'd love to see good competition in this space, but it seems Tesla has a healthy moat.

The moat will seem pretty shallow when Google starts licensing their technology.

I'd love to see waymo adapted to a consumer vehicle, but I have high doubts that this will happen any time soon. I know Waymo has a partnership with Toyota but they don't even have a competitive EV.

Maybe re-reading what I wrote would help you lmgtfy.

So are they part of the price of the car, or are they a subscription?

The did, kind of. Instead of removing "Full", they added a disclaimer to the end.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a70420085/tesla-drops-auto...

Full is a relative term. Full compared to what? Compared to a professional rally car driver? Compared to my grandmother? Compared to a properly licensed tourist in a foreign country?

From videos I see on YouTube, I’m struggling to think what is not Full compared to—at a bare minimum—the bottom 10 percent of drivers on the road.

> From videos I see on YouTube, I’m struggling to think what is not Full compared to—at a bare minimum—the bottom 10 percent of drivers on the road.

Try sitting in the back seat or even just acting like a passenger and you'll see the difference very quickly.

For me it has a very specific meaning: "Full" means "Unsupervised and without a geofence". Anything less is not Full Self Driving.

If someone is legally restricted from leaving their home town, does that mean they're not able to fully self drive a car?

Yes. If they're restricted they do not have full driving rights. This is of course relative to other drivers. If nobody from your country is allowed to drive in a different country for political reasons or something then not being able to drive there doesn't mean you lack full driving rights. Even someone who has a breathalyzer built into their car doesn't have their full driving rights.

How would you distinguish political reasons from legal reasons? If Bruce is legally precluded from leaving the state of Rhode Island, would we stop describing his brain and body as being capable of the full driving task?

How about if he's allowed to drive anywhere except Rhode Island? Is that any different?

"Full" in full self-driving is a superfluous modifier. But it does is further emphasize that, what a person would consider "self-driving", it can do. Except it can't, of course.

Nobody admits they're in the bottom 10%. Nobody even admits they're in the bottom 75%.

I'm bottom 75%.

That is brave. Unless you have 5 DWIs to prove how bad a driver you are, or something equally bad... Or maybe you have finally realized old age has destroyed your mind and so you no longer have a drivers license (though this is rare).

Honestly I have no idea how I would objectively rate my driving. I know a few things that I do better than everyone else - but I have no idea what bad things I'm doing that I'm unaware of. I don't know if the bad things I avoid are the really bad things that make me much better, or if they are just minor things and the things I'm unaware of are much more important. About the only thing everyone knows about is that driving drunk is really really bad, but most people don't do that.

I said "bottom 75%", not "bottom 7.5%".

Exactly, most everyone thinks they are better that 75%

> Full compared to what?

Tesla set their own benchmark, their own goal posts, and their own timelines.

In 2016 Tesla said, "as of today, all Tesla vehicles produced in our factory – including Model 3 – will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.":

https://electrek.co/2024/08/24/tesla-deletes-its-blog-post-s...

https://web.archive.org/web/20240730071548/https://tesla.com...

That was, of course, a lie. Tesla has spent the last 10 years lying about the state of FSD. Tesla keeps claiming FSD will be achieved "next year".

What about 1 million robotaxis on the road by 2020: https://www.thedrive.com/news/38129/elon-musk-promised-1-mil...

More lies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...

But you knew all that already. Defending a decade's worth of lies is intellectually dishonest.

Some advice if you want to be intellectually satiated, I would suggest disregarding any forward-looking statements by any company executives. You'll find life to be a lot less emotionally draining.

You can change the subject to the hyperbole and spin by Elon Musk, that's fine. Just be aware that's what you're doing. You're changing the subject. I do understand this cult of anti-personality, but I'm only interested in the technology (made by thousands of people whose name is not Elon) in customer hands right now and not about past promises. Right now, their FSD technology stack looks fairly impressive.

The subject hasn't changed. The subject is Tesla's full self-driving is not, in fact, full self-driving.

It wasn't 10 years ago and it still isn't now.

If you are unable to admit to the practical reality of that then you are not interested in technology.

You changed the subject. If you cannot see this, perhaps ask an LLM to explain it to you.

As for the actual subject, your opinion on the semantic question is noted. I did ask, I suppose.

The moment you said "Full is a relative term. Full compared to what?" is the moment you started playing dishonest semantic games.

I recognize you're desperate to "win", but there's no winning once you embrace dishonesty.

Dude, nobody else is here. You need convince me that I did anything other than ask a reasonable semantic question. Trying to dissemble in front of a non-existent crowd isn't effective. Want to change my mind? Make an actual argument.

Now. How was I being dishonest? Be specific.

Full is literally the first word in the feature.

even my 95 miata drives itself on a straight flat road...

but unlike the Tesla, the Miata is a car designed for the delight of the driver, rather than as a futuristic driving appliance / infotainment centre.

if they replaced F with S (Somewhat) all would be swell (hard to make any sales when not lying though…)

I was 100% FSD today. Went to the office, ran some errands, went home. Never touched the steering wheel once. 2026 Model S Plaid.

It does look to an outside non-Tesla-owning observer, like it's getting there sometimes, but do you think it is? Or is it just plateauing?

Honestly, the best thing to do is go on a free test drive and evaluate for yourself. I don’t see it ever hitting 100%, but I don’t find myself needing to take over under normal conditions.

> Never touched the steering wheel once.

Don’t you have to?

No, you can start FSD from stopped using a button on the screen. It drives to the destination and parks itself.

It's been a year or two since I drove a Tesla, but in FSD mode it insisted I at least touch the steering wheel regularly.

Modern refreshed models use an eye tracking camera.

The steering wheel sensor could be defeated by taping a water bottle to the wheel. The eye tracking is supposed to be harder to defeat, although I wonder if it would accept a mannequin in the driver seat.

No. A camera watches you to make sure you’re paying attention.

I have FSD in a 2026 Model Y and it does a solid job for me.

I'm at 96% FSD miles since they started tracking a few months ago. It works very well. It was unreliable until about 12-18 months ago, but it's been great since v13.

It works, it just doesn’t fully drive by itself.

It'll work next year, don't worry.

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