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I love my Model 3, but I cannot overstate how little confidence I have that Tesla is anywhere near to full self driving. Just this weekend I drove a 600 mile r

I love my Model 3, but I cannot overstate how little confidence I have that Tesla is anywhere near to full self driving. Just this weekend I drove a 600 mile round trip. It was cold weather with some snow on the shoulders, but the actual road surfaces had no snow. I was mainly using just the cruise control, and no auto-steer. Even with just cruise, the car gets "spooked" from time to time and will suddenly jerk to a slower speed for absolutely no reason, even during the day and with no precipitation. At one point it did this several times within the span of 10 minutes, which was such an unpleasant experience that it made me want to stop using cruise entirely. Besides being jarring for the people in the car, it makes me worry that anyone tailgating will rear end me. Besides that, the rain/sleet that was falling from time to time apparently blocked the camera, so at one point the car wouldn't even let me use cruise any more. The car is tons of fun to drive and I don't regret the purchase at all. But I really don't like the overpromising on full self-driving. EDIT: bmcahren pointed out to me that the new FSD beta software merges images from multiple angles, which my software does not do. I don't know much about that, but it sounds like the kind of change that could lead to a noticeably better result than what I experienced.

tempsy 6y ago
“I love my Tesla but” has become so overused it is on the verge of becoming a meme.
- google234123 6y ago
  So only unconditional love for something or someone is not a meme?
  - tempsy 6y ago
    no, there’s just a fascinating phenomenon where Tesla owners appear to shrug off bad quality control, bad service, buggy software and controls, safety issues, etc en masse because they love their car.
    - tenacious_tuna 6y ago
      I think it happens in just about every realm when you get close to the innovative edge, especially in tech: you can be really excited about some aspects of $SHINY_NEW_THING while recognizing that it has serious drawbacks in other realms--possibly realms that people expect $SHINY_NEW_THING to excel at as a contender in the space. (inb4 "Sure it goes fast, but the panel gaps!") Personally I love Tesla-the-company and my Tesla vehicle because of the innovation it's driving in the space--and I'm willing to tolerate the ways it falls short due to how incredible it is in other ways.... but I do try to be up front about those shortcomings when I discuss it, at the risk of being one of those "I love my Tesla, but..." people.
    - haberman 6y ago
      The car is comfortable, responsive, stylish, fun, and feels great to drive. The cruise control is fantastic in stop-and-go traffic. I always look forward to driving it. And then every once in a while does something that drives me absolutely crazy, for a minute, and then goes back to being fun again.
      - tempsy 6y ago
        the biggest issue is the service model not anything related to the car unless you got a lemon. they aren’t scaling service centers fast enough to keep up with an extra 200k cars added on the road every quarter, so service meaningfully deteriorates every week as more cars are sold and existing cars age. it simply doesn’t work unless they were committed to building out 2x-3x the SCs they have now but nothing indicates that’s on the roadmap at all.
        kjksf 6y ago
        Here's a Tesla 2020 Q3 investor update https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/4E7BR9_TSLA_Q3_2020_Update_P0Q85U.pdf?xseo=&response-content-disposition=inline%3Bfilename%3D%22TSLA-Q3-2020-Update.pdf%22 https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/4E7BR9_TSLA_Q3_2020_Updat... The numbers: - increased service locations 12% YoY - increased mobile service fleet 8% YoY - increased supercharging stations and connectors 32% YoY They are clearly building more service. During quarterly conference call Musk stated that he believes service is the biggest driver of sales and that Tesla will invest in that. So contrary to what you claim it's on the roadmap. Many people are over the moon with Tesla service given that mobile service comes to you and they can do fixes without you even there. That's something no other car maker does at scale, as far as I know. Did you have a personal experience with Tesla's bad service or is it just amplifying FUD from other people?
gfodor 6y ago
I don't think your anecdote lends any evidence to the claim they're not close. Several reasons: - You weren't using the actual FSD software, but the live production autopilot, so it's Apples to Oranges. - It's not clear that the transition from low quality to high quality full self driving will be linear. Most claims around anecdotes come with an unspoken assumption we ought to see steady improvement over time vs a step-function like behavior. The latter seems somewhat possible given the nature of how improvements in AI systems seem to happen. - Beyond all this, without understanding the underlying cause of the behavior you mention, it's hard to say from a risk perspective if the car made the right choice. Unless you have a clear understanding of the data and mechanisms that led to the speed reduction, it's hard to be sure it's a bug beyond not doing such transitions in a way that are comfortable for passengers. (My understanding is adding smoothing to the control algorithm is somewhat separate from overall decisionmaking, and hence poor control algorithms may mislead you into thinking it's more dangerous.)
- ericlewis 6y ago
  Also a Tesla owner, on latest AP hardware: I would be amazed if the FSD update manages to solve all the problems, I have been through a few updates where things noticeably improved but we now have to pay Tesla money because while using autopark it just completely reversed itself (at a pretty high speed) into an object. It was insane. We’ve had weird AP issues too and now we don’t feel confident using any of those features.
  - gfodor 6y ago
    I agree Tesla's shipped software that doesn't inspire confidence in the current version. I only use it on highways and remain fully engaged. (If I had to guess, in that scenario it does provide a marginal improvement in safety over fully manual driving.) However I don't think lack of confidence in the current software, particularly the production autopilot software, is really giving me much signal in helping predict if Tesla will have FSD anytime soon or not. Now that FSD (at least in Phoenix conditions) is known to be possible the prior that it will never be achieved by Tesla to me is near zero, beyond the chance that LIDAR is strictly necessary and they have a doomed hardware stack. I think there is a pretty big range of possible timelines though - I could see it happening in as soon as 18 months or as late as 10 years depending on how poorly things sift out with their hardware stack.
bmcahren 6y ago
The FSD update which merges the cameras together inside the NN is so drastically different than the software you're describing your experience. You might as well be comparing your experience driving a BMW or Cadillac with SuperCruise. Your experience on the old tech stack is irrelevant.
- judge2020 6y ago
  Well, apparently it's the same NNs. The FSD beta just has more stuff turned on: https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1343670544529575936?s=20 https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1343670544529575936?... https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1336467014727110656?s=20 https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1336467014727110656?...
  - kjksf 6y ago
    The guy you're quoting gets his information from spelunking in Tesla firmware. He's not a dev on AutoPilot team. It's well documented that FSD is a architectural rewrite of the code. Pre-FSD the input to NN were individual still pictures taken by the cameras. New architecture feeds NN with video feed from all cameras. New architecture is possible thanks to new FSD chip that is 20x better that was Tesla used before. I don't see what definition of NN would consider them the same system. On YouTube you can find talks by Karpathy where he goes into detail about this stuff.
- tenacious_tuna 6y ago
  Fellow Model 3 driver here. > You might as well be comparing your experience driving a BMW or Cadillac .... But OP isn't--he's comparing the current live Tesla features with paywall'd / betawall'd features on the same car, from the same manufacturer. I cannot think of a more relevant comparison! I think it's completely reasonable to doubt Tesla's (and Elon's) claims in this realm, when the existing, public examples of this technology fall far, far short of the kind of confidence we'd want to have in these systems. > Your experience on the old tech stack is irrelevant. I 100% disagree. If Tesla can't even get a basic function like cruise control to work well enough that drivers are confident in it, why would I trust that they can get self drving to work well? Especially following things like the Summon beta, or similar fiascos? I still get twitchy when my M3 comes up on an off ramp it's not supposed to take on autosteer--I've had the same behavior as OP (sudden unexpected speed decrease) happen far too many times for me to have confidence in that system. In turn, I have even less faith in the more complicated systems, like autosteer or FSD.
omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
I think phantom braking with TACC is a function of it being alpha software. With the beta stuff (everything else), the driver is expected to always be alert and intervene where appropriate, so Tesla doesn't have to be as aggressive on the safety side. As it relates to the features, I agree that they aren't ready for what most drivers expect, either because they aren't reliable enough (beta) it because they aren't confident enough (TACC). With that said, FSD is a feature set, not a level of reliability. As a whole it eventually needs to reach a level of reliability, but there's no specific time horizon. For Tesla, a feature moving from beta to alpha is what indicates reliability. In addition, that reliability may not come with the degree of confidence most people expect from a driver. Safe FSD could just end up as the AI equivalent to a student driver. It'll get you someplace safely, but there may be phantom braking, excessive waiting, and so on. If that's the case it would be nice if we could enable a beta version with more "normal" driving that we would have to keep an eye on.
- ljlolel 6y ago
  Why Tesla Autopilot ought to be awful, until it’s perfect https://jperla.medium.com/why-tesla-autopilot-ought-to-be-awful-until-its-perfect-8fb0b0764ef8 https://jperla.medium.com/why-tesla-autopilot-ought-to-be-aw...
jowday 6y ago
Check judge2020's reply to bmcahren - you have the same software running, the FSD beta just uses more features from it.
ljlolel 6y ago
Why Tesla Autopilot ought to be awful, until it’s perfect https://jperla.medium.com/why-tesla-autopilot-ought-to-be-awful-until-its-perfect-8fb0b0764ef8 https://jperla.medium.com/why-tesla-autopilot-ought-to-be-aw...

tempsy 6y ago

“I love my Tesla but” has become so overused it is on the verge of becoming a meme.

google234123 6y ago
So only unconditional love for something or someone is not a meme?
- tempsy 6y ago
  no, there’s just a fascinating phenomenon where Tesla owners appear to shrug off bad quality control, bad service, buggy software and controls, safety issues, etc en masse because they love their car.
  - tenacious_tuna 6y ago
    I think it happens in just about every realm when you get close to the innovative edge, especially in tech: you can be really excited about some aspects of $SHINY_NEW_THING while recognizing that it has serious drawbacks in other realms--possibly realms that people expect $SHINY_NEW_THING to excel at as a contender in the space. (inb4 "Sure it goes fast, but the panel gaps!") Personally I love Tesla-the-company and my Tesla vehicle because of the innovation it's driving in the space--and I'm willing to tolerate the ways it falls short due to how incredible it is in other ways.... but I do try to be up front about those shortcomings when I discuss it, at the risk of being one of those "I love my Tesla, but..." people.
  - haberman 6y ago
    The car is comfortable, responsive, stylish, fun, and feels great to drive. The cruise control is fantastic in stop-and-go traffic. I always look forward to driving it. And then every once in a while does something that drives me absolutely crazy, for a minute, and then goes back to being fun again.
    - tempsy 6y ago
      the biggest issue is the service model not anything related to the car unless you got a lemon. they aren’t scaling service centers fast enough to keep up with an extra 200k cars added on the road every quarter, so service meaningfully deteriorates every week as more cars are sold and existing cars age. it simply doesn’t work unless they were committed to building out 2x-3x the SCs they have now but nothing indicates that’s on the roadmap at all.
      - kjksf 6y ago
        Here's a Tesla 2020 Q3 investor update https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/4E7BR9_TSLA_Q3_2020_Update_P0Q85U.pdf?xseo=&response-content-disposition=inline%3Bfilename%3D%22TSLA-Q3-2020-Update.pdf%22 https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/4E7BR9_TSLA_Q3_2020_Updat... The numbers: - increased service locations 12% YoY - increased mobile service fleet 8% YoY - increased supercharging stations and connectors 32% YoY They are clearly building more service. During quarterly conference call Musk stated that he believes service is the biggest driver of sales and that Tesla will invest in that. So contrary to what you claim it's on the roadmap. Many people are over the moon with Tesla service given that mobile service comes to you and they can do fixes without you even there. That's something no other car maker does at scale, as far as I know. Did you have a personal experience with Tesla's bad service or is it just amplifying FUD from other people?

gfodor 6y ago

I don't think your anecdote lends any evidence to the claim they're not close. Several reasons: - You weren't using the actual FSD software, but the live production autopilot, so it's Apples to Oranges. - It's not clear that the transition from low quality to high quality full self driving will be linear. Most claims around anecdotes come with an unspoken assumption we ought to see steady improvement over time vs a step-function like behavior. The latter seems somewhat possible given the nature of how improvements in AI systems seem to happen. - Beyond all this, without understanding the underlying cause of the behavior you mention, it's hard to say from a risk perspective if the car made the right choice. Unless you have a clear understanding of the data and mechanisms that led to the speed reduction, it's hard to be sure it's a bug beyond not doing such transitions in a way that are comfortable for passengers. (My understanding is adding smoothing to the control algorithm is somewhat separate from overall decisionmaking, and hence poor control algorithms may mislead you into thinking it's more dangerous.)

ericlewis 6y ago
Also a Tesla owner, on latest AP hardware: I would be amazed if the FSD update manages to solve all the problems, I have been through a few updates where things noticeably improved but we now have to pay Tesla money because while using autopark it just completely reversed itself (at a pretty high speed) into an object. It was insane. We’ve had weird AP issues too and now we don’t feel confident using any of those features.
- gfodor 6y ago
  I agree Tesla's shipped software that doesn't inspire confidence in the current version. I only use it on highways and remain fully engaged. (If I had to guess, in that scenario it does provide a marginal improvement in safety over fully manual driving.) However I don't think lack of confidence in the current software, particularly the production autopilot software, is really giving me much signal in helping predict if Tesla will have FSD anytime soon or not. Now that FSD (at least in Phoenix conditions) is known to be possible the prior that it will never be achieved by Tesla to me is near zero, beyond the chance that LIDAR is strictly necessary and they have a doomed hardware stack. I think there is a pretty big range of possible timelines though - I could see it happening in as soon as 18 months or as late as 10 years depending on how poorly things sift out with their hardware stack.

bmcahren 6y ago

The FSD update which merges the cameras together inside the NN is so drastically different than the software you're describing your experience. You might as well be comparing your experience driving a BMW or Cadillac with SuperCruise. Your experience on the old tech stack is irrelevant.

judge2020 6y ago
Well, apparently it's the same NNs. The FSD beta just has more stuff turned on: https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1343670544529575936?s=20 https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1343670544529575936?... https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1336467014727110656?s=20 https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1336467014727110656?...
- kjksf 6y ago
  The guy you're quoting gets his information from spelunking in Tesla firmware. He's not a dev on AutoPilot team. It's well documented that FSD is a architectural rewrite of the code. Pre-FSD the input to NN were individual still pictures taken by the cameras. New architecture feeds NN with video feed from all cameras. New architecture is possible thanks to new FSD chip that is 20x better that was Tesla used before. I don't see what definition of NN would consider them the same system. On YouTube you can find talks by Karpathy where he goes into detail about this stuff.
tenacious_tuna 6y ago
Fellow Model 3 driver here. > You might as well be comparing your experience driving a BMW or Cadillac .... But OP isn't--he's comparing the current live Tesla features with paywall'd / betawall'd features on the same car, from the same manufacturer. I cannot think of a more relevant comparison! I think it's completely reasonable to doubt Tesla's (and Elon's) claims in this realm, when the existing, public examples of this technology fall far, far short of the kind of confidence we'd want to have in these systems. > Your experience on the old tech stack is irrelevant. I 100% disagree. If Tesla can't even get a basic function like cruise control to work well enough that drivers are confident in it, why would I trust that they can get self drving to work well? Especially following things like the Summon beta, or similar fiascos? I still get twitchy when my M3 comes up on an off ramp it's not supposed to take on autosteer--I've had the same behavior as OP (sudden unexpected speed decrease) happen far too many times for me to have confidence in that system. In turn, I have even less faith in the more complicated systems, like autosteer or FSD.

omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago

I think phantom braking with TACC is a function of it being alpha software. With the beta stuff (everything else), the driver is expected to always be alert and intervene where appropriate, so Tesla doesn't have to be as aggressive on the safety side. As it relates to the features, I agree that they aren't ready for what most drivers expect, either because they aren't reliable enough (beta) it because they aren't confident enough (TACC). With that said, FSD is a feature set, not a level of reliability. As a whole it eventually needs to reach a level of reliability, but there's no specific time horizon. For Tesla, a feature moving from beta to alpha is what indicates reliability. In addition, that reliability may not come with the degree of confidence most people expect from a driver. Safe FSD could just end up as the AI equivalent to a student driver. It'll get you someplace safely, but there may be phantom braking, excessive waiting, and so on. If that's the case it would be nice if we could enable a beta version with more "normal" driving that we would have to keep an eye on.

ljlolel 6y ago
Why Tesla Autopilot ought to be awful, until it’s perfect https://jperla.medium.com/why-tesla-autopilot-ought-to-be-awful-until-its-perfect-8fb0b0764ef8 https://jperla.medium.com/why-tesla-autopilot-ought-to-be-aw...

jowday 6y ago

Check judge2020's reply to bmcahren - you have the same software running, the FSD beta just uses more features from it.

ljlolel 6y ago

Why Tesla Autopilot ought to be awful, until it’s perfect https://jperla.medium.com/why-tesla-autopilot-ought-to-be-awful-until-its-perfect-8fb0b0764ef8 https://jperla.medium.com/why-tesla-autopilot-ought-to-be-aw...