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Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

• forgot-im-old 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • jlmorton 2y ago
    That's exactly what Elon has said. He's said that 99.99% of all vehicle miles are useless from a training perspective. https://www.teslarati.com/fsd-distance-driven-training-musk/ https://www.teslarati.com/fsd-distance-driven-training-musk/
    • georgeg23 2y ago
      So isn't that a deep problem to his FSD architecture?
      • acchow 2y ago
        No. For the easy 99.999% of driving they keep very little of the training data. Basically you want to minimize manual interventions (aka disengagements). When the driver intervenes, they keep a few seconds before (30 seconds?) and after that intervention and add that to the training data. So their training data is basically just the exceptional cases. They need to just make sure they don’t overfit so that the learned model actually does have some “understanding” of why decisions are made and can generalize.
        • forgot-im-old 2y ago
          It's not clear that a bunch of cascaded rectified linear functions will every generalize to near 100%. The error floor is at a dangerous level regardless of training. AGI is needed to tackle the final 1%>
          • red75prime 2y ago
            The universal approximation theorem disagrees. The question is how large the network should be and how much training data it needs. And for now it can only be tested experimentally.
            • forgot-im-old 2y ago
              The universal approximation theorem does not apply once you include any realistic training algorithms / stochastic gradient descent. There isn't a learnability guarantee.
              • red75prime 2y ago
                There's no theorem that SGD is insufficient. So, as I said, it's empirical.
                • forgot-im-old 2y ago
                  You said it only depends on network size, I'm saying it more likely is impossible regardless of network size due to fundamental limits in training methods.
    • croes 2y ago
      That's not the same. Elon thinks if he gets the right training data he gets rid of the dangerous 1% of errors. But that is not the case if it's a general problem of the used AI.
      • forgot-im-old 2y ago
        Right, getting more corner cases training data won't solve an architecture problem. AI in general quickly impresses when it's mostly right but improving from there is the challenge.
      • throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
        What are you using for "AI"? AI is a buzzword, unless you know specifically how they are using it, you can't make this claim. Many marketing teams are just using AI when it is really ML doing the work, or it could be both.
        • croes 2y ago
          There is no claim just a fact. More data won't help if the problem is the tools as such. Grandparent said the hard part is getting rid of the last 1%, parent claimed Elon said the dame when he said 99.99% of the trait data is useless. But it's not the same. Elon thinks he just needs the right data to solve the problem but it could be impossible even if he gets the data because of the limitations of the used type of AI. If you need a screwdriver but only have a hammer more nails won't help. AI is here used by me as an umbrella term for computer decision systems.
    • what-the-grump 2y ago
      And yet on a very simple drive I have to intervene 4-6 times over a distance of 8 miles. How is this not useful? It would have been easier to ask people to record how to drive roads by now and use video game track logic where you race a ghost by now… The only time fsd works ‘ok’, single lane roads with 90 degree stop signs / turns. I don’t believe that the current hardware can handle what is needed to have passable FSD for an average consumer.
• gabesullice 2y ago
  I find it difficult to take the technology review seriously with the off topic remarks and prefaces about Musk and Tesla at the beginning of the post.
  • guitarlimeo 2y ago
    I find that apologetic behaviour strange too. You own a Tesla, it's a good car, no need to be sorry for its frontman. I mean I kinda get it? But everyone's doing it and it's weird. It's almost like writing a review of meat and apologizing for eating meat beforehand.
    • asddubs 2y ago
      I think it's because people don't want to come off as endorsing elon musk/distance themselves from his weirder fans. I'll say though, 3 years ago is well after he called that one rescue diver a pedo so I don't know if the opening statement totally holds. Not that I really care that much.
      • guitarlimeo 2y ago
        Distancing is a good point, but maybe still not needed given that this is real critique. I would understand the distancing more if this review was praising FSD.
      • michelsedgh 2y ago
        [flagged]
        • KaiserPro 2y ago
          I think the difference is that the CEO of Apple isn't actively engaged in public divisive discourse on hot button issues. Don't get me wrong, I actively dislike the breathless discourse without any analysis (apple is the privacy leader, ok great, prove it...)
        • asddubs 2y ago
• simonebrunozzi 2y ago
  This is a pretty lame review, IMHO. I generally agree with the sentiment, but these examples are not great at providing full review of these features.
  • yoavm 2y ago
    I don't think it's aiming to be a "full review". When you take a driving test it really doesn't matter what stuff you are good at, it only matters if you're driving safely enough to be on the road. The article shows that FSD isn't worthy of a full review because it isn't safe enough to be on the road.
• yyggvbb 2y ago
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• zeeZ 2y ago
  > I assume it would have corrected itself eventually and gone back onto the main lane. > Another case where I’m sure it would have corrected itself eventually [...]. Why? That's some bold assumptions. If it's going to fail, let it (as long as it's safe and legal), and see what it actually does.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • Kwpolska 2y ago
    Why would he do something Tesla should have done? Why would he risk his life for a blog post? He’s a regular person trying to reach his destination, not a Tesla beta tester with Tesla-funded insurance in case the car tries to kills him.
    • red75prime 2y ago
      The author wasn't in danger: "[...] both cases are not life-or-death situations [...]"
    • zeeZ 2y ago
      1. I explicitly mentioned to do it only as long as it was legal and safe to do so. 2. The post is about three test rides. Sure he may have had a destination to reach at the same time, but he was testing. 3. It probably wasn't a life or death situation the way it was written. "The car would have figured itself out eventually" does not sound immediately life threatening. 4. There's no basis for "the car would have figured itself out eventually". I felt the bits I quoted came off a bit too hand wavey for something that is labeled a test. Either don't include it at all, or see what actually happens (within reason).
  • penjelly 2y ago
    author pointed out that either way drivers behind him would've been very confused, so even if it DID correct, it still made mistakes that disrupted the flow of traffic.
• mondomondo 2y ago
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• sneak 2y ago
  > I’ve had a Model Y for more than 3 years now, well before Elon revealed himself as the kind of person he really is, and I’ve been happy with it. > When I buy my next car, my requirements will be simple: I want an EV, an extensive charger network along I-80, and an autosteer that’s at least as good as what I have today. Let’s hope there’ll be decent Tesla alternatives by then. Gee, I wonder if this is going to be an unbiased review of the technology.
  • dmix 2y ago
    This HN thread will be full of it too soon enough.
  • ggm 2y ago
    Would it be unfair to ask if you like the current FSD and think its on track, or if you don't. Or, the third option of not wanting FSD at all because I'm trying to work out what systematic bias you expect to see here.
  • ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    Conversely, I'd worry about the impartiality of any Tesla review that didn't prominently disclaim that yes, they are aware Musk is acting like a loon recently.
    • sneak 2y ago
      You can’t make two million automobiles a year and two stage orbital rockets while “acting like a loon”. Either Tesla and SpaceX are not congruent and coterminous with Elon, or he’s doing fine. Either way, the ad hominem has no place in the discussion of the works of the companies he runs. Both Tesla and SpaceX are kicking ass, so either you have to give him credit for it, or you have to stop bashing the company if you don’t.
      • ben_w 2y ago
        > You can’t make two million automobiles a year and two stage orbital rockets while “acting like a loon”. If it wasn't for the counter-example of Musk demonstrating that exact combination, I'd agree. I don't know if all the stuff with, say, Twitter (usage as well as ownership), is him blowing off steam, or if he managed to build up leadership teams in Tesla and SpaceX that can just work around him, but somehow, somehow, he's managed to be exactly what SpaceX and Tesla needed to turn from a joke into a success… while also still being a lunatic with TBC and Twitter. Even with Tesla, even though the company needed someone with his showmanship to get anywhere, the $420 privatisation thing, the way FSD turned from a fantastic surprise into a neck-millstone of overpromising and under-delivering are bizarre own-goals.
• jlmorton 2y ago
  > For the second test, my wife reluctantly gave me permission to try out FSD for interstate driving, which should be its best case scenario. Except this isn't the new FSD stack, it's the old one. It's a fair criticism of the current offering, but it's not much evidence against a future robotaxi.
  • LeoPanthera 2y ago
    It's still "FSD", though. The consumer doesn't know, or care, what version is running.
    • aikinai 2y ago
      The consumer doesn’t care, but an evaluation of the state of the art and potential of self-driving should.
  • tsimionescu 2y ago
    Is that the old FSD stack that, starting with 2018, has been "ready for fully autonomous driving where you can take a nap by this time next year", according to the CEO of the company? Why are people still hopeful for Tesla FSD when other companies are so, so far ahead already?
    • red75prime 2y ago
      Which ones? Waymo is geolocked. Mercedes' Drive Pilot is a glorified lane assist. Cruise is suspended. Who else?
      • tsimionescu 2y ago
        Geolocked driverless cars are a major advance over FSD. Mercedes "glorified lane assist" is actually safe in well defined parameters, and gives you a well defined amount of time (10s?) to re-engage, with guaranteed fail-safe if you don't. FSD is... A tech demo?
        • 2y ago
• nelsonic 2y ago
  The author of this article doesn't understand how continuous improvement in software works ... Saying that it will "never" work is myopic. Never bet against Moores Law or Elon! As a Tesla M3 owner (in Europe where we don't have FSD yet) I cannot wait to have it for long road trips on highways where I want to relax and have a "copilot" do some of the "thinking" & driving for me. Yes, there are still some instances of FSD Supervised doing strange things in the YouTube videos people are posting, but it's definitely no longer a "demo"! It's real and it's only a matter of time before it's better than humans in most circumstances ... Now as a TSLA shareholder, I'm still sceptical that the RoboTaxi/CyberCab system will be 100% foolproof ... But if they can prove through data that it's safer than 99.9% of human drivers on every day journeys and thus get regulatory approval it will be game changing! If Tesla can do 90% of short ride city driving at a fraction of the cost of Uber/Lyft they have a real cash cow on the horizon!
  • therouwboat 2y ago
    "With FSD, you still need to pay attention but now there’s the additional cognitive load to monitor an unpredictable system over which you don’t have direct control. Forget about just being focused, you need to be hyper-focused" Driving with FSD on seems to be more stressful than just driving.
    • what-the-grump 2y ago
      Driving with FSD in mid to moderate traffic is more stressful. Usually drop fsd to AP. Driving with FSD on empty roads is very enjoyable and whenever it decides to do something you can recover/correct with no stress. Driving in poor conditions with FSD feels safer, it sees better than me in the dark and rain for sure. Driving with fsd in heavy traffic about the same as driving a car yourself, this where I usually drop back to AP. Is driving my tesla easier or harder than another vehicle? It’s much much easier than driving my ICE suv. But from a pure FSD perspective, if the car didn’t have AP I believe my opinion would not be the same.
  • KaiserPro 2y ago
    > Saying that it will "never" work is myopic. The implication is that Tesla can't make it work. In the same way that Meta are unlikley to make AR glasses a "thing". > As a Tesla M3 owner (in Europe where we don't have FSD yet) I cannot wait to have it for long road trips on highways where I want to relax and have a "copilot" do some of the "thinking" & driving for me. depending on which country you are in, you'll be on the hook for any mistakes. > It's real and it's only a matter of time before it's better than humans in most circumstances ... This is the fallacy of statistics. Its probably better/similar performance than humans in 80% of cases. The problem is, it performs significantly worse when it fails. It does not fail safe. Thats the really hard part. I also question the wisdom of using unverified recordings of average drivers to train on. Unless you know how go they are, you're going to be feeding really bad behaviours into the model.
• html5cat 2y ago
  My car is old enough to not have adaptive cruise control and lane centering, but that's all I'd love to have for now. Well executed, it's such a joy on a highway or in traffic. Jeep and others have it but drive like a bowling ball with guardrails up. Has anyone here successfully retrofitted Audi a4 with ACC? I hear Cruise started like that, would be awesome to get a kit like that.
  • mft_ 2y ago
    Check out comma.ai - it may fit your car.
    • throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
      https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/master/docs/CARS.md https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/master/docs/CARS.m...
  • masklinn 2y ago
    Honestly stop and go is where I most want ACC / follow mode. Regular cruise works fine on highways, and my experience with adaptive is that it makes passing more difficult as it slowed down way too early (though other implementations might be better), plus the focus of smooth / comfortable slowdowns means it can be hard to realise if you’re watching the road and your surroundings, at which point you’re quite a ways below speed for the passing lane and need to accelerate back up. Also doesn’t deal well with passing trucks for lack of anticipation.
  • numpad0 2y ago
    The car has to have electric power steering that takes forged external commands. ~2005 cars tend to have incompatible hydraulic type units, 2019~ cars tend to have signature enforcement for external steering input. Gas, brake, steering in cars are controlled by each separate computers with each own firmware - there's no centralized keyboard controller or USB root hub to take over. The computers have to be designed and built to accept driving commands, or replaced by one supporting it, or mechanically actuated. The latter two paths are rarely taken.
• Shank 2y ago
  This pretty much jibes with my experience. Autopilot has phantom breaking still, but navigate-on-autopilot feels more predictable on the freeway and more useful than FSD. The fact that v12 has “exited beta” and is now the “Supervised” mode doesn’t give me confidence right now. The iterative progress it went through during the beta was really good — I felt that each point release was getting closer to a polished system that could be trusted. The v12 stack supposedly replaced all of the prior work with “photons in, photons out” straight neural networks, but I think this simply didn’t result in the stability the system needs. The v12 software behaves pathologically in situations where autopilot is excellent. As a concrete example, it routinely switches out of the current lane to “follow route” and then immediately slams on the brakes to slow down, when no turn or exit is present. Then it turns on the signal and dutifully tries to get back into the previous lane. On screen, it says it’s wanting to change into a faster lane. This will happen multiple times on the same road. This is on CA-57 northbound in SoCal —- an area where I would expect there to be pretty good testing. Personally, AP / navigate-on-autopilot is still superior. On city streets, sure, FSD can sort-of manage. But it isn’t trustworthy enough for me to use it.
  • iknowstuff 2y ago
    FSD 12 is not used on freeways. City streets only. You’re observing behavior of the old stack if you’re seeing notices for lane change reasoning. They’ll be unifying it later this year.
    • jasoncartwright 2y ago
      Ah yes, of course - we just have to wait for the next version. The response seen in the Twitter replies, YouTube comments and now HN comments to descriptions of FSD foulups for the best part of a decade now.
      • drcode 2y ago
        he/she was explicitly saying v12 was making an error, and someone corrected to say that it wasn't using v12 yet in that specific case nobody is trying to shift goalposts
• maxlin 2y ago
  This article has the same feel as the old Tesla review by that journalist who was in bed with the oil/gas industry and Tesla provided logs of him driving around in a parking lot at 1% charge after he tried to slander Tesla that the review car "just ran out of battery suddenly"
• disillusioned 2y ago
  I just completed my trial and it was better than I expected, and yet still utterly terrifying at bits. It still feels _very_ far off from being able to safely navigate and negotiate only medium-complexity environments, but maybe the vaunted 12.4/12.5 update will change all of that. For example: * It still won't change in or out of a solid line HOV lane here in Arizona. Feels like an easy fix, but there it is * I have concerns about its ability to check oncoming traffic when coming out of an occluded side street or alley. For example, my alley (where my garage leads) connects to a MAJOR road that is extremely fast. It is also fairly occluded in the side view by bushes and a light post. A human will move their head forward, crane their neck, and also be able to detect subtle changes in the light and shadows through the bush itself to determine if there's _any_ movement and interpret that movement as a potential car, even if they can't positively see a car. They can inch forward until they can see that the path is clear. The Tesla's side-facing camera is in the b-pillar, behind the driver's head, and at best, it can inch forward (and does) but gaining a high-confidence positive reading that the path is clear is... well, nearly impossible in certain cases that aren't impossible for humans, and that's concerning. * Parking still takes one too many adjustments, and impatient drivers around you definitely notice it * At one point, the FSD/AP engine itself crashed on me while fully engaged. Unfortunately, this happened on a freeway connector ramp with a pretty steep curve, and when it crashed, it disengaged the steering wheel and sent us careening towards the barrier: it was a single lane HOV ramp, and we were going about 70 mph, so if I hadn't been hover-handing, it would've easily resulted in a bad accident. This wasn't a case of disengagement or AP getting scared or losing confidence. The engine itself suddenly, without warning, and for no discernible reason, crashed entirely. (It immediately threw an error and said AP System Error/Take Control Immediately.) It then showed the car in a sea of black, as the visualization/FSD engine rebooted. This sort of crash is kryptonite. It's terrifying and its randomness and senselessness and opacity towards what caused it if anything is haunting. Again, a disengagement like this with no driver would result in catastrophe. On the flip side, I was fairly surprised at how well it handled a lot of basic driving tasks. Visual-only parking still freaks me out (especially since my model HAS ultrasonics, but you disable them when you go visual-only, which is absurd), and a couple turns felt close to the curb, but overall, driving was fairly smooth and decent. I have the added benefit of living in Phoenix, which is Waymo country. Waymos drive more confidently, and more importantly, are already fully autonomous. They navigate complex environents fairly decently (though, for example, my dad got stuck in one doing loops of a dealership parking lot that confused it a few weeks ago) and they're comfortable to ride in. They're not yet on freeways, but apparently that'll change soon, but they also only go the speed limit, which is Phoenix is... a choice. Elon keeps pushing this dream of a robotaxi fleet of Teslas, but I agree with the OP that it feels a far way off before I'd be comfortable with the idea of these things fully autonomously driving, and I say this as someone who sees a half dozen Waymos every single day. I also wonder more broadly about the core conceit here: not that fractional car ownership doesn't make sense; it absolutely does, but in the idea that Tesla owners are going to be comfortable with their ~$50k-$150k vehicles roaming around and picking up strangers who... hopefully don't do things to their car, all while hoping the car comes back home. I don't believe Elon was pitching the robotaxi as being wholly Tesla owned vehicles, but it seems like a big societal shift to get people comfortable with their cars having minds of their own, and taking in randos.
• mg 2y ago
  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/IR/TSLA-Q1-2024-Update.pdf 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?
  • erulabs 2y ago
    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.
    • cheeseface 2y ago
      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).
    • seeekr 2y ago
      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.
• choeger 2y ago
  What everyone seems to be ignoring when it comes to autonomous cars is that the last 1% or 0.1% or whatever remains unsolvable for "AI" might not really matter. We can change roads, ffs! At the bare minimum, we could fence off difficult areas and force manual driving. Once many people own an autonomous car, there will be pressure to make roads safe and convenient for them. Phantom braking for instance, is only a safety issue when the following car gets too close. Lanes can be annotated, etc. The "AI" part is just marketing to get these cars on the road and set the customer's expectations. Once that is done, the hard parts will just be moved from the car manufacturer to the road builders.
  • mrtksn 2y ago
    Road infrastructure is crazy expensive and even if you are willing to rebuild it for the autonomous cars instead of building a mass transit, you will have either segregated roads for autonomous cars(which is essentially individualistic mass transit) or you will have mixed car infrastructure. The US has a road network of 7 million km and apparently it costs about 1 million to 45 million[0] to build 1 km of road, depending on the nature of the infrastructure. Obviously the higher end is for large roads built in city centres but even at the lower end of the cost spectrum its crazy expensive. IMHO doesn't make sense to rebuild the infrastructure for autonomous cars. If you re going to rebuild the infrastructure you can be better of to built continent wide mass transit. At least you won't need parking lots. [0] https://compassinternational.net/order-magnitude-road-highway-costs/ https://compassinternational.net/order-magnitude-road-highwa...
  • andoando 2y ago
    Half of the city infrastructure is dedicated to supporting 3000-5000 pounds of highly manufactured metal to move a single 100-200 pound passenger going the same direction as everyone else. And we want to spends billions on autonomous driving so we can continue being locked in the absolute least efficient solution so we can require manufacturing another $10k or so of equipment on hundreds of millions of cars to enable FSD? This is a sham sold for the money.
  • imtringued 2y ago
    Every time I see someone start a new planned community I am wondering why they haven't designed it with autonomous vehicles in mind. You could get away with much simpler systems.
• ThereIsNoWorry 2y ago
  Almost a decade ago I used to be a hyped up HS graduate fully spoon-fed the AI hype bubble (after 2012, the first "deep" learning breakthroughs for image classification started hyping the game up). I studied at a top 5 university for CS and specialised in deep learning. Three years ago I finished, rejected a (some would call "prestigious") PhD offer and was thoroughly let down by how "stupid" AI is. For the last 2-ish years, companies found a way to throw supercomputers on a preprocessed internet dictionary dataset and the media gulped it up like nothing, because on the surface it looks shiny and fancy, but when you peek it open, it's utterly stupid and flawed, with very limited uses for actual products. Anything that requires any amount of precision, accountability, reproducibility? Yeah, good luck trusting a system that inherently just learns statistics out of data and will thus fundamentally always have an unacceptable margin of error. Imagine using a function that gives you several different answers for the same input, in analytical applications that need a single correct answer. I don't know anyone in SWE that uses AI for more than as a glorified autocomplete which needs to be proof-read and corrected more often than not to the point of oftentimes being contraproductive. Tldr; it is exactly zero surprising that FSD doesn't work, and it will not work with the current underlying basis (deep learning). The irony is, that people with power to allocate billions of dollars have no technical understanding and just trust the obviously fake marketing slides. Right, Devin?
  • monkfish328 2y ago
    Or perhaps statistics is reasoning generalised? E.T. Jayne's classic on this makes the case, I'd encourage reading the first chapter - https://www.amazon.com/Probability-Theory-Science-T-Jaynes/dp/0521592712 https://www.amazon.com/Probability-Theory-Science-T-Jaynes/d....
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
    What are you using as the definition of 'doesn't work'? Are you taking the author's claims? Does something have to be perfect to work? If that's the case we shouldn't have bridges because sometimes they fail?
• deng 2y ago
  And please keep in mind that this is pretty much in the optimal settings for FSD: great weather, huge streets, everything is as "car friendly" as it gets. I'd like to see FSD navigating an old Italian city, there's just no way. Even in car-friendly Germany you very often have streets with side-parking, which are too narrow to fit two cars, you need to communicate with oncoming cars, for instance by waving or flashing your headlights, swerve into free spaces on the side to let other cars go through, watch out for cyclists overtaking you from both sides, etc. And this is not even mentioning the weather... So this robotaxi thing might eventually work in some US cities, but pretty much nowhere else.
  • bob1029 2y ago
    My neighborhood has the effectively one-way street thing going on. FSD would be a total clown show in here. Tesla would have to add some way to determine the velocity of the oncoming traffic around a 90 degree bend while dealing with extremely limited visibility due to seasonal foliage. They would also have to add a way to factor in the historical behavior of these cars over time. For example, I know the guy who drives the blue Tundra is kind of pokey, so I speed up a bit to clear the contention first. The more compelling scenario might be the one where I know the white Mercedes SUV has an extremely aggressive driver, so I'll prefer to wait on them to preserve the peace.
    • deng 2y ago
      Yes, what is also important is that in many cities you often need to drive with a bit of... let's say "confidence", otherwise you will never leave your current spot. When you try to enter a busy street, you sometimes JUST NEED TO GO, trusting the oncoming traffic will slow down if needed. Sometimes a nice person will flash headlights to let you know it's OK, but I'm pretty sure FSD will not be able to notice that... Also, even in rule-abiding Germany, some traffic laws are seen more relaxed than others. For instance, the law says that at a stop sign, you need to come to a full stop, but you will see that most drivers don't do that but just drive very slowly (if that...). Likewise, the law says to keep 1,50m distance from bikes and motorcycles, but in the above mentioned narrow streets, that would also often mean that you will not move at all for a long time. I would guess that FSD would need to abide by traffic laws just for regulatory purposes, and that would make you look like an idiot in many cities... That's not even to speak of countries where traffic laws in general are more like suggestions...
• hankman86 2y ago
  They should teach Tesla’s “autopilot” (and its FSD upgrade) in business schools. Turns out you can sustainably push up company valuation on vapourware. You have to wonder if Tesla’s autonomous driving technology was actually ever meant to turn into a product. Or whether it is mostly a tool to justify the lofty Tesla stock price. I very much doubt that it is technologically ahead of its competitors.
  • ClassyJacket 2y ago
    But it's... out right now. You can literally use it today.
    • rvnx 2y ago
      And it sort of works in limited cases. FSD is like ChatGPT, it works in many cases, it does some mistakes, but it is certainly not “useless”. It won’t replace full time humans yet (the same way that ChatGPT does not replace a developer) but can still work in some scenarios. To the investor, ChatGPT is sold as “AGI is just round the corner”.
      • tlonny 2y ago
        If ChatGPT emits a fragment of code that doesn’t compile, a developer can simply undo and try again. No such luxury is granted to the driver using FSD who has just collided with another vehicle.
        • vachina 2y ago
          Very low bar to have code that just compiles.
        • pipes 2y ago
          Or produces code that compiles but is subtly wrong it probably won't kill someone, well until we start developing safety critical systems with it. One day we might have only developers that can't actually write code fluently and we'll expect them massage what ever LLMs produce into something workable. Oh well.
• sbt 2y ago
  Unfortunately, the adaptive cruise control is also far dumber than it thinks it is, slamming the breaks when passing under bridges on the highway etc.
  • cess11 2y ago
    Why? Because of shadows or does it operate on a 2D 'view' of the traffic situation?
    • michaelt 2y ago
      IIRC it's an vision-only ML-based system. So the answer to "why" is probably "we don't know lol"
      • imtringued 2y ago
        Image segmentation is almost a solved problem. There is no reason why it should get confused even with a vision only system. Their problem is most likely that they don't have enough compute to process a history of frames and instead process a single image at a time leading to jumps in the segmentation results and those random jumps cause unpredictable braking.
        • michaelt 2y ago
          > There is no reason why it should get confused even with a vision only system. So people keep asserting. And yet here we are.
        • lucianbr 2y ago
          > Image segmentation is almost a solved problem. Almost pregnant.
      • cess11 2y ago
        Right. Scary stuff. I'm not excited to drive a cheap second-hand ICE car, but the fanciness stops at AC and 3.5 mm AUX-jack on the stereo, and that's pretty nice. If I wanted to I could do service and repairs myself.
• ENGNR 2y ago
  How does Tesla FSD fair against the Waymo self driving taxis? I'm curious about whether self driving is still an impossible task right now, or if it's just a matter of quality between companies - in which case it's possibly a fair bet being made by Telsa execs that they'll bridge the gap given time and money.
  • jfoster 2y ago
    Currently, it's definitely less reliable than Waymo, but is available anywhere in the US or Canada, and is coming to more countries soon. The other factor is the trajectory of each endeavour. Waymo are gradually adding more cities, and Tesla FSD is gradually getting more reliable. Both of them are going to be perfectly fine self-driving systems at some point in the future. It's an open question as to when Waymo will be able to scale up substantially, and when Tesla FSD will be reliable enough to operate as a robotaxi service. You can see lots of videos of both on YouTube to gauge where they're up to. If you find accounts that are focused on each, you can search by oldest videos to see the progress that's been made and extrapolate from there.
  • xnx 2y ago
    Waymo does 50K paid trips per week without a driver behind the wheel. Tesla does zero. Waymo is a business. Tesla FSD is currently just a tech demo.
    • FrojoS 2y ago
      And Tesla is selling FSD for thousands of dollars per activation. Waymo technology is awesome, but I'm pretty sure, right now it's a money-losing business for its owner, Google.
    • golol 2y ago
      Lol I'm pretty sure FSD generates more revenue than Waymo.
  • matthewdgreen 2y ago
    The Waymo cars drive themselves without (in person) supervision. As best as I can tell from three rides, they do it perfectly. However the range is limited to city streets in a few cities, no interstates at all (they are adding this soon.) The Tesla FSD even at v12 can go about five minutes before I have to intervene. If you’re extremely tolerant and don’t care what other drivers think (eg weird slow behavior at stop signs, sudden rapid bursts of acceleration in inappropriate places, turn signal decisions that a human driver wouldn’t make) I bet you could push it up to 10 or 15 minutes without intervention. I don’t have enough courage to genuinely let FSD loose on city streets without intervening. More generally, Waymo’s approach is to own the hardware and heavily supervise it with remote workers who can instruct it how to deal with complicated situations (eg lane blocked by emergency vehicle.) Tesla has none of that infrastructure yet. It’s sort of hard for me to see a business model where (1) the user owns the hardware, (2) there are necessary remote human beings monitoring and advising the car in sticky situations (that costs money), and (3) a third party company takes on the liability risk. The idea that you’re going to “rent out” your personal car during the day runs into the question of who pays when someone gets killed/hurt, and that immediately runs into the question of how a remote operator deals with the problem of malfunctioning hardware it doesn’t own (and why it needs to borrow other folks’ personal hardware at all.)
• nomilk 2y ago
  The article answers the wrong question of 'is FSD perfect?'. A better question is whether it's 'cost-benefit positive'. That's all that matters when users decide whether or not to use something. If FSD reduces fatigue and allows you to arrive to work fresher, it might be worth tolerating the odd wrong turn extending the drive time by 2 minutes.
  • Laremere 2y ago
    The conclusion addresses your point: > Without FSD, you pay attention to the road and everything else is within your control. With FSD, you still need to pay attention but now there’s the additional cognitive load to monitor an unpredictable system over which you don’t have direct control. For the author, FSD is a worse experience in addition to costing a lot of money.
    • JeffL 2y ago
      When you are new to it, yes. For me it's a better experience because I've been using it so long and have a good idea of what it can and can't handle. I use it extensively on roads I know it works well on, and use it sometimes tentitively on new roads when I'm in the mood. That I spend almost all of my driving time on the same few routes makes FSD very valuable to me. It's probably still not a net benefit if you're mostly driving new places or places where it doesn't work well, but it's getting better.
      • davidivadavid 2y ago
        > For me it's a better experience because I've been using it so long and have a good idea of what it can and can't handle. How would you know that, though? That's the reason why at this point I can't see myself ever using that kind of a feature. The added stress of the unpredictability would make the experience miserable.
    • throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
      I disagree with the author. I have a Comma 3x and use a fork of openpilot. It's comparable to tesla but not as good overall. It 100% reduces my cognitive load and definitely reduces fatigue. There is no question. Also, I paid only ~$1500.
• NoblePublius 2y ago
  FSD is worse than autopilot, and makes autopilot worse. When you enable FSD, it turns on the cabin camera and applies the same driver attention standard to autopilot. Autopilot is really good! But if FSD is on, it becomes next to useless. You actually have to look at the road all the time!
  • speedgoose 2y ago
    Well, don’t you have to look at the road all the time?
    • NoblePublius 2y ago
      No!
• sschueller 2y ago
  "well before Elon revealed himself as the kind of person he really is" Many of us knew that Elon was full of shit long before but until he started spewing his politics no one cared to listed to even respected industry experts. A sad state of affairs IMO.
• TheDong 2y ago
  The thing I've been most amazed at about FSD is that there hasn't been any sort of lawsuit around FSD refunds. There are people who paid thousands to tens-of-thousands of dollars for a promise that their car would eventually have "full self driving". A not-insignificant portion of those people have lost any chance at actually getting FSD, whether by their car being totaled in an accident, or having sold it, or such, without ever seeing working FSD. As far as I know there's no way to get a refund, and people very obviously didn't get "full self driving" as advertised by Elon, so it really does seem like some people paid for a promise that turned out to be nothing... which sounds like lawsuit material to me. There have also been multiple public promises that FSD would be delivered in a matter of years (like in 2016, the promise that "by the end of next year, FSD will take you across the country safely while you sleep"). If anyone bought FSD due to believing those promised timelines, that also seems like it would be a pretty strong case for a refund to me.
  • FiberBundle 2y ago
    There have been lawsuits. I'm unable to find the actual documents, but this article [0] reports on it and has some unbelievable quotes in it. > Lin rejected Tesla's argument that LoSavio should have known earlier. "Although Tesla contends that it should have been obvious to LoSavio that his car needed lidar to self-drive and that his car did not have it, LoSavio plausibly alleges that he reasonably believed Tesla's claims that it could achieve self-driving with the car's existing hardware and that, if he diligently brought his car in for the required updates, the car would soon achieve the promised results," Lin wrote. EDIT: found the court document; the quote is in the last paragraph on page 5: https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/05/16/teslaamendedcomplaint.pdf https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/05/16/teslaamendedcomplaint.pdf [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/tesla-must-face-fraud-suit-for-claiming-its-cars-could-fully-drive-themselves/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/tesla-must-face-...
    • ddalex 2y ago
      That's a very strange defense: you should have known we're lying you.
• Animats 2y ago
  Seen this discussion before. Musk claims that Tesla will announce fully autonomous driverless taxi mode on August 8th. That's "announce", not "ship". If this were anywhere near close to happening, there would be test vehicles all over the place, like Waymo and Cruise. There would be press reports. In reality, Tesla has an autonomous vehicle test license in California from the DMV and reports zero miles driven.
  • wouldbecouldbe 2y ago
    They are already on the road for years ;)
  • iamgopal 2y ago
    isn't it in itself an announcement ?
    • qarl 2y ago
      Yes. That was my thought when I first heard it: they're announcing an announcement. I wish I had a cult that would let me get away with stuff like this.
• epolanski 2y ago
  The first two mistakes he points out I would've done likely too as a human not knowing the area to be honest.
• musha68k 2y ago
  Good analysis but did many people miss what happened during the Tham Luang cave rescue? One of his most terrible (failed) marketing stunts: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Elon-Musk-accuse-the-cave-diver-Vern-Unsworth-who-masterminded-the-Thai-cave-rescue-of-being-a-pedophile https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Elon-Musk-accuse-the-cave-dive... > I’ve had a Model Y for more than 3 years now, well before Elon revealed himself as the kind of person he really is, and I’ve been happy with it.
  • lll-o-lll 2y ago
    Sadly, this was the start of the cognitive dissonance for me that led from fanboy -> disappointment -> better left unsaid. Revealed himself indeed. Oh for a good and righteous king! But not in this life; not from men.
  • roca 2y ago
    Yeah, I thought exactly the same thing. If you didn't know what kind of person Elon is after the Thai cave diver incident in 2019, you weren't paying much attention.
• drcode 2y ago
  I have FSD v12 and for my drives, in my part of the country, I have to do a mild safety intervention maybe once a week (like, getting closer to another car than I'm comfortable with) sorry other people are having different experiences, but FSD is a significant quality of life improvement for me. Nothing is nicer than getting in the car after a long day and letting it chauffeur me home. (yes I still pay attention)
  • phantompeace 2y ago
    Nothing beats standing up after my day’s ended and walking to the living room ;)
    • drcode 2y ago
      I retired a long time ago, but agree working from home rocks
    • m463 2y ago
      I will sell you the pentultimate AI to navigate. It will prevent dangerous sitations like: - entering a room and stopping abruptly while wondering why you entered. - stepping on legos. - the coffee table shin scenario.
  • rjh29 2y ago
    People who drive often find basic driving "automatic"; if you still need to be vigilant, maybe even hypervigilant because you're not personally driving the car, what's the advantage?
    • drcode 2y ago
      Maybe I'm just a bad driver, but it feels much safer to me having two entities paying attention, instead of just one It's much more comfortable not to have to micromanage the exact position of the car at every moment, as a manual driver does I think your "automatic driving" argument is wishful thinking
      • 2y ago
• xyst 2y ago
  Self driving cars in general are a useless technology demo. Not just TSLA (although more so because of the repeated false claims). It’s a way for the car industry to fight against their extinction. In the beginning the argument was: “it’s not the cars killing people, it’s the damn ‘jay walkers’ (term invented by auto industry, btw). Get those people off the road and cram them into the sides of the streets so my fat car can ride freely!11” That campaign worked, to some extent, and now we have a patch work of sidewalks. Then later… Eisenhower (inspired by the ability for the German military to easily mobilize across the country via autobahn) pushed for interstate highways subsidized by the people. Auto industry capitalized on this and this contributed to the invention of the American suburb and slow decay of once walkable urban cores. Cars were a luxury item. Now it’s a necessity, along with a whole laundry list of items for a car owner: - gas - time spent looking for charger, and charging - parking (less space at home for living and instead using space for car) - time spent finding public parking - parking fees - time spent in traffic - car repairs - car maintenance - car insurance - yearly taxes for registration - car sales tax - car depreciation - toll fees for turnpike/regional highway In recent years, people have been realizing how car centric transportation cannot scale (ie, induced demand); and is an environmental disaster. Now the auto industry’s answer is: “oh we have self driving cars!!1 that’s going to fix it. It’s the damn human that can’t drive!! Have aRtIfICiAl iNtElLiGeNcE hold the wheel! As for pollution, electric cars will fix that” (totally ignoring the carbon emissions to transition to an EV, increased brake dust and tire wear pollution, and rolling 10 yr contribution to e-waste in the form of batteries, and a grid that has traditionally relied on non-renewable sources)
  • gravescale 2y ago
    Nothing represents the idea that cars were intended to be absolutely welded to the idea of respectable American society than the "parkway" (it's a park, but you drive on it!). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkway And of course it turns out Robert Moses' fingerprints are on it.
  • dzhiurgis 2y ago
    > It’s a way for the car industry to fight against their extinction. Do you have any evidence car industry is about to extinct? Seems kinda opposite - even with multiple levels of subsidies, public transport is utter failure in most places.
• phkahler 2y ago
  The first 2 and last incident seem like mapping errors. I know people working in this space, and it sounds like they all think the problem is "just giving it a better map". They want to rely primarily on a world map and use things like vision to "see" cars and other local stuff. That approach will never work (except in limited cases like Waymo mostly gets away with). Humans rely primarily on vision and understanding, and reading signs. FSD requires AGI. These systems are all expensive science fair projects and have already killed a number of people.
• solarpunk 2y ago
  whoa, welcome to the war on cars, hn.
• primitivesuave 2y ago
  FSD is not ready. I'm a Model Y owner, tend to lean pro-Elon, and will gladly tell you that it's a fantastic car - but the self-driving is still not ready. My free month of autopilot made me trust it less. It's quite good at highway driving, but the phantom braking and haphazard lane changing has eroded my trust to the point that I am manually driving the car 100% of the time. I prefer the previous pseudo-FSD which simply stayed in the current lane, and relied on human input for anything more than that. This whole FSD update has been a sobering realization that I really only want the safety features.
  • blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    > It's quite good at highway driving, but the phantom braking and haphazard lane changing has eroded my trust to the point that I am manually driving the car 100% of the time. Elsewhere in this discussion someone noted that the latest FSD updates don’t apply to highway driving. I don’t own a Tesla and am not a fan of them due to the various privacy issues and reliance on touchscreen controls. But for what it’s worth phantom braking is an issue I have on my non Tesla cars with their driver assistance features. I’m not sure if it is worse on a Tesla, but anecdotally in my friend’s Tesla I was blown away by how comparatively advanced a Tesla feels.
• k_bx 2y ago
  I wonder how is there no open data on "no mistakes FSD zones", e.g. areas of maps or routes that would be proven by large numbers to be error-free for Tesla FSD without interventions. Would clearly show progress and make people understand when they're trying the road that's not proof yet.
• csours 2y ago
  Disclosure: I work for a Tesla competitor, not on self-driving. This is solely my own opinion. More and more, I feel that we need at least a couple more paradigm changes - specifically: - More understandable models - being able to get good answers to "why did you do that" - Better retraining - Don't do that thing! (without training a whole model) - Better internal learning - don't wait for the next download Non ML changes: Public understanding and acceptance of self-driving, favorable insurance and legal framework. Public understanding includes improvements to two way communication between humans and self driving vehicles. Legal framework includes limited liability for manufacturers. NOTE: I don't love this idea or even like it, but without it we will only get driver enhancement features, not SDC. (If you're angry at this suggestion, know that I am too) --- My basic approach to all of this is that you need to have a solution to any problems that automation will encounter. The World is a problem generating machine. Most solutions to automation problems involve constraining the problem space. But as that guy said "Life, uh, finds a way"
• rayiner 2y ago
  > I’ve had a Model Y for more than 3 years now, well before Elon revealed himself as the kind of person he really is, and I’ve been happy with it Logical fallacy in the second paragraph. Doesn’t bode well.
  • throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
    It's almost impossible to have a rational discussion of anything Tesla now. The words Tesla and Elon bring far too much toxicity.
    • rayiner 2y ago
      I struggle to understand the negative reaction to him online. I don't like him because he divorced the mother of his children and throws out pie-in-the-sky projections about his businesses. But those are forgivable sins in Silicon Valley. And even though Musk writes many checks he can't cash, it's impossible to deny that he pretty much single-handedly restarted commercial space travel and EVs as American industries. The best selling car in the world in 2023 was American, not Japanese or German or Korean. That should make up for a lot of unkept promises about FSD, etc. At the root of the Musk hate seems to be the fact that he (loudly) doesn't subscribe to a handful of political positions that some folks have adopted as axiomatic in their moral worldview. They essentially see him as a heretic, and attack him for stuff that others get a pass on. I mean, Zuckerberg made his billions spying on everyone and destroying the mental health of teenagers. His businesses have a tiny fraction of the socially redeeming value of Musk's. But Zuck doesn't get a fraction of the hate Musk does.
• lencastre 2y ago
  FSD is maybe following the steps of the Segway… soon it will be ubiquitous.
• geekraver 2y ago
  This squares with my experience in the demo. It’s 98% there but that 2% is adding a lot of cognitive load and stress, so it’s a negative ROI.
• jmpman 2y ago
  I’ve been using FSD for the last 6 weeks. Paid for the monthly subscription, and running v12.3.6 It’s almost killed me once, when it was about to blow through a red light at ~70mph, while a car was about to turn left in front of me. There was no indication that it was going to stop, so I slammed on the brakes. Then, after about three weeks, it stopped tracking the lanes properly, and would drive straddling the lane divider. I’d repeatedly enable it when I was in the far left lane of a 4 lane road, and watch as it would promptly begin driving about two feet into the right lane. Disable, and reenabled and it would repeat this engineering feat. It continued for 2 days. Yesterday it was just driving extremely right justified. If there were any cyclists in the bike lane, my mirrors would be intruding into their space. Of course I bought the FSD function as I knew that I would be attentive and provide feedback, kind of a service to humanity, as this feature is far from prime time, and isn’t safe. I may cancel the service as I’m concerned that my 17 year old new driver will enable it, and not be as attentive.
  • jmpman 2y ago
    I just figured out what’s broken. The front facing cameras are obscured due to what appears to be glue outgassing from the glue holding the flocked material surrounding the front camera enclosure. This is the second time this has happened. The Tesla allows you to drive, and gives no warnings that it can’t resolve properly. I reported it to the NTSB before, with no resolution. Time to do it again.
    • jmpman 2y ago
      The front facing cameras were fogged. Just fixed that, but it’s still driving right justified all the way into the adjacent lane. Something is broken. NTSB time.
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
  ""If somebody doesn't believe Tesla's going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company," Musk said on the latest earnings call in April. He added, "We will, and we are." Musk has been making these kinds of pronouncements for years, and the company has yet to deliver. He still has friends and believers." https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/13/tesla-shareholder-vote-on-musk-pay-plan-wont-clear-legal-disputes.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/13/tesla-shareholder-vote-on-mu...
• rldjbpin 2y ago
  US tech has many such stories throughout the ages. but there is still a "cultural significance" to the novel ones like FSD imho. the vision marketing helped fuel the eventual development to make it a reality, whether we are there yet or not. another place where this is in play (also in the ai space) is the openai mumbo-jumbo. while there is plenty of discussions on hn about the real efficacies of genai, we have to agree that it has motivated companies to drop bucket loads of resources into its advancements. same way, the auto industry and researchers got a reason to fund designing the cars of the future. a smaller example where this worked out was the macbook air and ultrabooks space. while everybody was captivated by the original fitting inside a large envelope, it was an overheating, slow (even for its time) mess for many years. but by creating a clear market demand for the vision, we finally have devices that meet the original vision. while i cannot stand behind the current driver of FSD tech (or ai for that matter), i respect their role as a catalyst in research.
• renegade-otter 2y ago
  This is probably the most difficult problem in computer sense/vision that we have, and I am beginning to think that short of the purely hypothetical "AGI", this requires the computer known as "the human brain". The only way out I see is separate or vastly updated infrastructure - separate roads and highways, and streets with specific signs and markings to help FSD vehicles navigate. For example, to ban FSD vehicles from taking certain risky routes.
• MrSkelter 2y ago
  The author makes a mistake early on “hoping” when he buys a new car there are alternatives with adaptive cruise control as “good” as Tesla. This is the problem with Musk’s hype. There are many, many better systems. Including Mercedes level-3 self driving which is far beyond anything Tesla have. Simpler systems like autopilot which perform better are in Audi’s Hondas and more. People really need to understand that Musks pitch is simply a lie and there are independent tests proving how far behind Tesla are.
  • tverbeure 2y ago
    Author here: I’m well aware that there are similar autopilot systems. There’s a reason why my requirements list has “extensive charger network” before “autopilot just as good”. (Also, the autopilot of my wife’s Audi is a huge regression compared to the one of my Tesla. Though that’s the 2019 model, so who knows…)