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So many armchair opinions here about Tesla FSD. It drove me 175 miles today from a dense and complicated city to a distant destination without me intervening on

by kbos87 3y ago

So many armchair opinions here about Tesla FSD. It drove me 175 miles today from a dense and complicated city to a distant destination without me intervening once. Reading the comments here you’d think it’s completely smoke and mirrors.

MangoCoffee 3y ago
i noticed on HN. if you gave Tesla/Elon any credits. you get down voted.
- LanceJones 3y ago
  Absolutely true. A lot of emotions on this forum.
- bboygravity 3y ago
  This tells me the FUD/smearing campaigns by hedge funds that are (or have been) short Tesla have been extremely effective at brainwashing everybody including the relatively intelligent who roam HN. The average (hedge fund owned) media outlet, especially the financial ones, basically read "please remember to hate Elon".
jillesvangurp 3y ago
Yep, it's either science fiction or science fact. There seems to be a lot of opinionated people that insist they can counter reality by yelling harder. But their points of view don't necessarily align with the facts. My view is very simple. Lots of people insist that this stuff is dangerous and will kill people. Lots of Tesla FSD capable cars are on the road and are racking up billions of miles. Where are the traffic deaths? Where are the countless crashses? Those supposedly dangerous situations escalating all the time? It's all failing to happen as people insist it ought to be happening. Maybe that's because they are wrong. If anything, it seems Tesla runs circles around the likes of Volvo in terms of car safety by now. They certainly seem to insist so and they claim to have the numbers to prove it. And I'm not hearing a lot of statistics that counter that. Meanwhile, there are of course lots of traffic deaths. The vast majority of which involve human drivers making fatal mistakes and getting themselves into trouble. Even adjusted for relative miles driven by humans and AI, the numbers aren't good for humans. They are terrible actually. It's not that hard to do better than that. AI vs. drunk, tired, reckless, moronic, etc. human drivers is basically no contest. And there are a lot of those. Roads are dangerous because of that.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- kbos87 3y ago
  Not to mention that if you are using FSD, your attention is being monitored. I can’t pick up my phone or look away from the road for more than a few seconds without the car warning me. Meanwhile the rest of the driving public almost always has their phone in hand.
bottlepalm 3y ago
I did over 700 miles with it over the memorial day weekend, worked really well especially on the highway no issues, surface streets probably 90%. Each release gets noticeably better. I actually notice when someone drives manually now how it's not as smooth as FSD in many situations.
Reubend 3y ago
That's fantastic! But hopefully you were paying attention, ready to take control at any point in time. I've personally been inside a "self-driving" Tesla that would have crashed without human intervention. So while we can give Tesla props for shipping a very useful feature, it's not reliable enough to be considered "fully self driving". There could easily be fatal consequences for consumers who don't babysit it diligently enough.
- kbos87 3y ago
  I don’t disagree with you. FSD isn’t yet what the name claims, though they’ve made shocking progress in just the last 3 months. If your experience with FSD was longer ago, know that it’s almost a completely different system. I have full confidence it will get there, and it isn’t going to take long from where it is today. Also, the eye tracking update that was rolled out a few months ago is strict - you are either paying attention to the road and never looking at a phone, or FSD is going to shut itself off and suspend your use of it. It easily holds you to a higher standard than the average driver holds themself for being engaged with the road (which is a low bar.)
oldgradstudent 3y ago
What's your life expectancy is you let Tesla FSD do all the driving for you, without you supervising it?
- kbos87 3y ago
  There’s eye tracking in the cabin now. It’s simply not possible to use it without supervising it.
  - oldgradstudent 3y ago
    Of course, Full Self Driving is not fully self driving because it relies on a human to monitor it. Without a driver monitoring system, what would have been your life expectancy if you let it drive without you monitoring it? Full Self Driving can only be fully self driving when it approaches the reliability and safety of human drivers.
    - kbos87 3y ago
      If it’s the name we are focusing on, I agree with you - the system isn’t “full self driving”, the name is misleading, and Tesla didn’t do themselves any favors by naming it that. But if it’s how reliable and useful this feature is in practical applications, that’s a completely different story, and for 99% of people who don’t actually care about semantics, that’s going to be the important part.

by kbos87 3y ago

MangoCoffee 3y ago

i noticed on HN. if you gave Tesla/Elon any credits. you get down voted.

LanceJones 3y ago
Absolutely true. A lot of emotions on this forum.
bboygravity 3y ago
This tells me the FUD/smearing campaigns by hedge funds that are (or have been) short Tesla have been extremely effective at brainwashing everybody including the relatively intelligent who roam HN. The average (hedge fund owned) media outlet, especially the financial ones, basically read "please remember to hate Elon".

jillesvangurp 3y ago

Yep, it's either science fiction or science fact. There seems to be a lot of opinionated people that insist they can counter reality by yelling harder. But their points of view don't necessarily align with the facts. My view is very simple. Lots of people insist that this stuff is dangerous and will kill people. Lots of Tesla FSD capable cars are on the road and are racking up billions of miles. Where are the traffic deaths? Where are the countless crashses? Those supposedly dangerous situations escalating all the time? It's all failing to happen as people insist it ought to be happening. Maybe that's because they are wrong. If anything, it seems Tesla runs circles around the likes of Volvo in terms of car safety by now. They certainly seem to insist so and they claim to have the numbers to prove it. And I'm not hearing a lot of statistics that counter that. Meanwhile, there are of course lots of traffic deaths. The vast majority of which involve human drivers making fatal mistakes and getting themselves into trouble. Even adjusted for relative miles driven by humans and AI, the numbers aren't good for humans. They are terrible actually. It's not that hard to do better than that. AI vs. drunk, tired, reckless, moronic, etc. human drivers is basically no contest. And there are a lot of those. Roads are dangerous because of that.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kbos87 3y ago
Not to mention that if you are using FSD, your attention is being monitored. I can’t pick up my phone or look away from the road for more than a few seconds without the car warning me. Meanwhile the rest of the driving public almost always has their phone in hand.

bottlepalm 3y ago

I did over 700 miles with it over the memorial day weekend, worked really well especially on the highway no issues, surface streets probably 90%. Each release gets noticeably better. I actually notice when someone drives manually now how it's not as smooth as FSD in many situations.

Reubend 3y ago

That's fantastic! But hopefully you were paying attention, ready to take control at any point in time. I've personally been inside a "self-driving" Tesla that would have crashed without human intervention. So while we can give Tesla props for shipping a very useful feature, it's not reliable enough to be considered "fully self driving". There could easily be fatal consequences for consumers who don't babysit it diligently enough.

kbos87 3y ago
I don’t disagree with you. FSD isn’t yet what the name claims, though they’ve made shocking progress in just the last 3 months. If your experience with FSD was longer ago, know that it’s almost a completely different system. I have full confidence it will get there, and it isn’t going to take long from where it is today. Also, the eye tracking update that was rolled out a few months ago is strict - you are either paying attention to the road and never looking at a phone, or FSD is going to shut itself off and suspend your use of it. It easily holds you to a higher standard than the average driver holds themself for being engaged with the road (which is a low bar.)

oldgradstudent 3y ago

What's your life expectancy is you let Tesla FSD do all the driving for you, without you supervising it?

kbos87 3y ago
There’s eye tracking in the cabin now. It’s simply not possible to use it without supervising it.
- oldgradstudent 3y ago
  Of course, Full Self Driving is not fully self driving because it relies on a human to monitor it. Without a driver monitoring system, what would have been your life expectancy if you let it drive without you monitoring it? Full Self Driving can only be fully self driving when it approaches the reliability and safety of human drivers.
  - kbos87 3y ago
    If it’s the name we are focusing on, I agree with you - the system isn’t “full self driving”, the name is misleading, and Tesla didn’t do themselves any favors by naming it that. But if it’s how reliable and useful this feature is in practical applications, that’s a completely different story, and for 99% of people who don’t actually care about semantics, that’s going to be the important part.