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Another odd intervention tonite, this time on the highway, probably v11. Speed limit 65mph, and two cars were blockading the lanes our direction going about 45mph. (The one on the right going slightly faster.) The one on the left seemed… odd. And FSD wanted to tailgate it. A cop car got on the...

Did a 10-mile city drive on v12.3.4 just now, on a route that regularly required 10+ interventions a year or two ago. This time there were three interventions: one to let another driver get past me to turn right at a red light. Ego had positioned itself badly in the lane (stopped too far back...

It was tricky enough that I didn’t feel confident tackling it myself, and the SC estimated $255 in labor to diagnose it. Making it a few steps simpler would probably help on both those fronts.

Absolutely agreed with all of these points. I think the idea of a service tool with a standard bright LED pattern is really important; otherwise it's too easy for the techs to eyeball the camera feed in a low-dynamic-range environment and say, "What's wrong? I don't see the problem!" Redesigning...

Click to expand on my above post to see a Before vid. I haven't checked any After vids from the thumb drive yet, but I presume they will look very much cleaner and sharper, as they do on my other car (2017 Model 3). Nighttime driving doesn't throw warnings anymore, so it's clearly much better...

Wow, you were absolutely right! I took the car to the West LA Service Center (it needed a tire rotation anyway), and at first the techs were skeptical, claiming that the FSD cameras were SUPPOSED to look that way, and were not intended for driving at night or when it's very sunny (?!?!)...

Pedantically, FSD did see it, but didn't have enough relevant examples in its training set to know what the correct thing was (if anything) to do with that information. The whole point (and beauty) of v12-style end-to-end neural networks is that there is no intermediate hand-engineered...

No question that different cost components scale differently. The battery would presumably be smaller and have somewhat less range (for the base model), which is a significant cost savings. And the materials and subsystems (e.g. screens, speakers, lights) would be expected to be less premium...

My 2008 Tesla Roadster is still working fine on its original battery pack, after 16 years. If a 2008 pack can last 16 years (and counting), a 2013 pack should certainly be capable of lasting 20 years, albeit with normal capacity degradation over time. A 30% reduction in capacity over 20 years...

Really? It's two inches shorter than a Model S/X. (196" for Lucid Air vs 198" for Model S/X.) The Model 3/Y are 186"/187", for comparison. Cybertruck, on the other hand, is 224" long, which is even longer than the Hummer EV (217"). Hilariously, the Cybertruck is closer in length to the Tesla...

Seventh half of 2023! My guess is that Robotaxi and Model 2 were originally planned to be the same body design, which will still be unveiled (as Robotaxi-only) on 8/8. The new plan will be to modify Model 3/Y with some (but not all) of the planned Robotaxi-generation manufacturing refinements...

Why wouldn't FSD see the wave? It has eight cameras. The beauty of end-to-end NN training is that it will implicitly train itself on subtle signals like this, just as humans do. (As long as these sorts of examples are in the training set, but why wouldn't they be?) Since the training data pulls...

I think the distributed supercomputer idea is quite a good one. Tesla's FSD computers are optimized for computational performance per watt (unlike say my old PlayStation 3, which was an absolute power hog when I once tried to use it for SETI-at-Home), and with increasing time-dependent renewable...

To be fair, the questioner asked a too-extreme question. They essentially asked, "Will you commit to providing free FSD transferability in perpetuity to all owners until Tesla's autonomy reaches L5?" That strongly deserved a No answer, not least because true L5 is probably 15 years away, but...

FUSC currently adds significantly to the private-party resale value. FSD not so much, because it’s seeming more and more clear that older hardware (HW3) will never achieve L4, for instance. FSD transferability is more important on principle because Tesla failed to deliver the original full value...

Yes, I know this is Waymo’s future plan, but the car is not in mass production yet, let alone publicly deployed. Here’s a more recent update: https://carnewschina.com/2024/01/17/zeekr-waymo-robotaxi-m-vision-spotted-testing-in-china-ahead-of-us-launch/ For Tesla’s Robotaxi, a lot hinges on...

Steer-by-wire makes sense for multiple reasons, but “lack of driving controls” implies L5 autonomy, and Tesla is at least 10 years away from that, probably 15-20 years. So I expect the first generation of Robotaxi will absolutely still have a steering wheel or equivalent controls, allowing...

I fully expect that "Model 2" and "Robotaxi" will be exactly the same hardware product, introduced on 8/8. The $25k price will be subsidized by the purchaser pledging a substantial cut of future Robotaxi revenue to Tesla. (Maybe there will be an option to pay a higher price upfront and keep more...

"Can", if it's extremely lucky. It's technically accurate to say that properly calibrated 12.3.4 has a nonzero probability of completing a coast-to-coast drive successfully and safely, with zero interventions. (I'd guess the probability of success on a given attempt would be less than 1%.) To be...

Agreed that it's "all a game", and just a question of finding the right time to strike. I'm not in a huge hurry; eventually there will be HW5, bidirectional charging, improved battery chemistry, an exterior refresh, and so forth. I'd be very surprised if they do away with the S and X altogether...

I have a 2017 Model 3 with FSD, and am considering upgrading it to new Model S. Having FSD transferability would make me MUCH more likely to pounce; it's actually quite difficult for me to see myself upgrading without it, knowing that it's likely to come back as an option at some point, and...

The difference is that the Oberth Effect cannot be leveraged to create a perpetual motion machine, but the reactionless drive can. The Oberth Effect doesn't violate conservation of energy / momentum, but the reactionless drive does. The reason I'm skeptical of the reactionless drive is this...

All of the above explanations of the Oberth Effect are pretty much equivalent; it's just a question of which appeals most to your intuition. It's not free energy; energy and momentum of the entire system (rocket + exhaust + planet) are always conserved. Another way to think about it is in terms...

Here’s how I think about it. Suppose you drop a rock from a hot air balloon. Acceleration acts on it while it’s falling, and it hits the ground at say 100mph. (Ignore air resistance.) Then throw the rock upward from the ground at 100mph. It will stop when it reaches the height of the hot air...

To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced instinct is indistinguishable from intelligence.” One useful definition of intelligence might be: “the ability to solve problems one hasn’t encountered before.” Each driving situation is unique, though many are similar. With enough...

The significance of the 2021 exterior refresh is a matter of perception. Motor Trend thought it was visually minor, and I agree with them. I do agree that recent headwinds push back the likelihood of these changes to 2026 or perhaps 2027. (Late 2025 is highly optimistic.) And even if they keep...

There hasn’t been a significant external refresh since the nosecone was eliminated in 2016. The 2021 refresh was quite minor. A bigger refresh is expected next year: https://www.motortrend.com/news/2025-tesla-model-s-update-electric-sedan-future-cars/ FSD transfer is currently unavailable I...

I’m in a similar situation, waiting for the right moment to upgrade my 2017 Model 3 to a new Model S LR. Slightly different from the X, but most of this wishlist would apply to the X as well. Here is what I’m waiting/hoping for: - External design refresh - Improved battery chemistry [faster...

A kid running out into the street from behind a parked car.

Every situation the car encounters (or that a human encounters) is at least subtly different from any situation ever encountered by any car or driver before. The neural net must extrapolate from its training set what to do in this new situation. With the removal of the intermediate C++ layer...

Exactly. My Model Y LR has a 310-mile range at 100%. From 10% to 70%, that's a 186-mile rated range. Less 20% for weather conditions and real-world driving, that's a 150-mile realistic comfortable range. During a recent long roadtrip, any stretches longer than about 160 miles felt like they...

We recently did a 3500-mile roundtrip from CA to TX in our Model Y LR, to see the solar eclipse. In general the 300-mile range felt just fine, though there were a few times we really wished it were 400+. One of the waypoints we had originally hoped to visit [Canyon de Chelly in Arizona] turned...

Dashcam video of FSD v12/v11 making no attempt to avoid the bucket, if you're curious. It's particularly odd because the car in front of me did swerve around it; I would have expected FSD to take this into account [through implicit training on similar scenarios], when deciding which obstacles...

Well, it looks like the Phoenix -> LA trip is infeasible after all, but not for any of the reasons discussed. The limiting factor turns out to be heat; Gruber advised me that an extended drive across the Mojave in hot conditions (>90 deg) is liable to overheat and temporarily brick the car, so...

The user interface in v12 has one absolutely terrible (though minor in the scheme of things) UI change, which is that the black "Favorite" star for radio stations now sits on top of the thumbnails themselves, so that when selecting a radio station from favorites, it is inevitable to accidentally...

This was with the newer car (2022 Model Y), though I've noticed the same issue on the older car (2017 Model 3) as well. I searched through the dashcam footage from the Model Y, and indeed the glare is pretty terrible. I'll try cleaning the inner glass and see if it helps. Thanks for the...

On the freeway a couple days ago, my Model Y with FSD ran straight over a (thankfully empty!) 5-gallon plastic bucket. I had momentarily glanced away from the road (terrible timing) so I missed it, but my passenger said that any human driver who saw it coming would have swerved around it. This...

I recall running the numbers vis-a-vis 16kW charging, and concluding that 60mph was about the Roadster's sweet spot for long-distance travel. With 6kW charging the optimal speed would be somewhat less, maybe 40mph. My highway strategy would probably be to find a slow semi truck and draft behind...

As Elon has long recognized, changing road infrastructure to suit the car's limitations is a losing battle. The reason is that there are literally thousands of different things one may encounter in driving that can be "non-standard"; not just road signs, and it is not practical to standardize or...

I recently spent a lot of time on Texas highways (with grass median) getting to and from the eclipse. It's still running the v11 stack on such highways of course, but it just LOVES to get into short left-turn-only lanes at 80mph and then swerve out of them. I hope that once highways are on the...

In "poor" driving conditions it will often insist on a super low speed. I had a drive on the freeway yesterday afternoon heading into the sun (not the best visibility, but not terrible), and FSD refused to go more than 10mph _below_ the speed limit. I could keep the accelerator pressed, but this...

It sometimes makes these mistakes even when the lane markings are crystal clear. There's a spot near my home where I often need to go straight through an intersection, and there's a well-marked left-turn-only lane. The car always tries to get into that lane and go straight from it, even though...

This discussion is relevant for an edge case I currently have, which is that my 2008 Roadster is currently sitting at Gruber Motors in Phoenix after having some work done, and I would love to drive it from there to my home in Los Angeles if I could conveniently do so. The car supports 16kW...

I fully expect that we will have AGI robots capable of building out the infrastructure for Mars colonies and ISPP, and do it that way, long before we send large numbers of humans there. Far cheaper and simpler [no need for life support or human-rating] and less risky. I expect it to be another...

Ah, I see how I misread the chart thinking “lanekeeping” was part of the definition, rather than merely an example. I suppose I have to walk back some of my recent posts. Still, it’s understandable that since “L2” encompasses such a huge range of implementations (from “adaptive cruise control +...

When they use a highly ambiguous phrase (“steering”), it will be interpreted in different ways. That’s why they disambiguated it to “lanekeeping” in an updated graphic. Unfortunately, the old graphic is still floating around. Agreed that the SAE system implies lockstep progress in different...

Agreed that a system must meet all the requirements for L4 (in every column) to be labeled “L4”. My statement was just that in the “Features” column they are already well past L2, somewhere between L3 and L4. I’m not saying this entitles them to call themselves an “L4 system”. (Agreed they are not.)

I believe this interpretation is not correct. SAE has since clarified that L2 “steering” simply means “lanekeeping”: https://www.sae.org/binaries/content/assets/cm/content/blog/sae-j3016-visual-chart_5.3.21.pdf Tesla’s current features (e.g. merging, turning, following traffic signals...

It’s a mixture of L2 (in the “what does the human driver have to do” column) and L4 (in the “features” column). It could just as easily be called “Universal L2” instead of “Supervised L4”, My main objection to labeling it “[qualifier] L4” is that I don’t believe the current generation of...