This Latest Attempt to Force FSD Upon Everyone is Hurting the FSD Cause More Than Helping

[Ostrichsak]

Warning: long detailed post ahead so get comfy if you choose to read it. I broke it up a little bit for those who want to read certain aspects.

► Overview:
This may be an unpopular opinion in this pro-Tesla community with many members to whom Tesla can do no wrong. I know that Tesla wants to get people to experience it in hopes they'll fall in love with it and not only buy it but tell others all about how amazing it is. The problem with this is that it's not there yet. Maybe one day, years from now, it will be. It's not there yet. So what they're doing is forcing people who have likely not experienced any form of AP themselves to experience full FSD as their first "dip of the toe into water" so to speak. This isn't a good idea. Those who have never experienced anything other than cruise control (I'm old enough to remember when this was a hotly contested feature along the lines of Autopilot) will be overwhelmed and not in the positive way that Elon thinks.


► Prime example:
A good friend of mine who's very into vehicles and tech who's also a smart fella bought himself a Model Y about 6-7 months ago. He'd been in our Teslas numerous times but had never really experienced any of the driver's aids himself. Just heard us talk about it so had at least an idea of what to expect with his. He took delivery and had 3-months of FSD trial. Gave it an honest trial and hated it. Now he will ONLY use TACC and nothing I can say about how great TACC + Lane Keep is will get him to even consider trying it again. I would label him as an average consumer, probably on the younger or more tech advanced side who would be most receptive to trying this sort of thing. In other words, the exact consumer Tesla is trying to convert. It's having the opposite effect based on new owners that I've talked to.


► Our first hand experience:
In my experience it's trash. I was pretty excited to get it as we have a trip coming up to Dallas which is an awful place to drive... even with good navigation which Teslas have. I was excited for the prospect of letting the car do the driving for us. We took delivery of our new Model Y that included the 1-month that everyone is currently getting along with the 3-months for self-referring for a total of 4 months. I even bragged to my wife when I discovered that those stacked when I was afraid they might overlap and I'd "only" get 3 months of use. I even joked that I sure hope I didn't get addicted and then feel compelled to buy it for $12k.

I went ahead and enabled it along with all of the related whiz-bang features, bells & whistles. We had a few hours worth of driving to do (city and highway both) so I thought it would be a great test since it was in areas we lived in and near so I knew them well.

At first I thought it was neat. But the more I used it, the worse it got. I had "Mad Max" and "Aggressive" set and the car was anything but those. Whenever it encountered a stop sign at an intersection, even if there was no cars or pedestrians in site, it would come to a full stop some 15ft before the line, wait about 5 seconds and then slowly creep forward to the line before stopping AGAIN. Why? What's the purpose of this. Then, it would proceed to take another 20 seconds or so to slowly make the turn through the intersection.

This was if there was ZERO cars, pedestrians or anything I would consider needed to be accounted for. Just a ghost town, an intersection and a single Tesla w/FSD enabled. In other words, a best case scenario. In all of these instances I didn't have someone behind me (thankfully) so I gave it full freedom to sort itself out. It was laughable.

This would magnified dramatically if there was any type of foliage, fence or other obstructions that was even close to the intersection. Not even in the line of site but just existed. It would creep a foot, stop, wait 5 seconds, creep another foot, stop, wait 5 seconds, creep another foot, wait 5 seconds... you get the point. It did this every. single. time. It was painful.

At one point, it tried to take us the wrong way down a one-way exit from a parking lot. I had to take over, stop it, reverse backwards back into the lot as cars were trying to exist a very busy road into the parking lot and had to sit and wait on me to sort things out since the lane was only wide enough for one vehicle, marked clearly as exit only multiple ways and curved for traffic coming into the parking lot.

On 4-lane highways it was doing all sorts of unexpected things. On one stretch of 65mph road we were the only vehicle within about a mile in any direction and, seemingly for no reason, it changed lanes from the right lane to the left lane. I assumed it wanted to be there so I just let it do it's things. About 30 seconds after establishing itself in the left lane, it then signaled and went back to the right lane, seemingly for no reason once again. I jokingly said it just passed a ghost car that wasn't there because it's behavior was about what you'd expect from passing a car on the highway doing a few mph less... but there was no car there.

Then, not 5min later, I came up on a car that was doing about 50mph in a 65mph zone. I had the offset of the car set to 11% so I was doing 72mph. The car came up behind the slower car and simply decreased speed to follow it at a safe distance at 50mph. There was not another car anywhere near us. I left it there for almost 2-painful-minutes to give it ample time to pass the slower car safely. I finally took over and manually passed to car to kick it back up to speed. Keep in mind that I have every user-setting available set to the most aggressive version possible as I'm not faint-of-heart when it comes to driving plus I've owned 9 Teslas now... 8 with AP of one form or another.

The last straw for me was a series of nanny alerts telling me to keep my eyes on the road to include one where it warned me to keep my eyes on the road after turning my head to check my blind spot before passing another car on a 4-lane highway. I had to look at the screen to see what it was on about and when I realized it wanted me to watch the road I looked back up to the road. Out of the corner of my eye I saw it go away so I knew I had satisfied it. It wasn't 10 seconds later I needed to look back at the screen since FSD was doing all sorts of weird things with the speed limit (it wouldn't recognize 65mph signs and would keep the "seen" sign at 45mph for a single multi-mile stretch that had several different 65mph signs along the way) to include going way above or way below my set speed (even after I disabled the stupid "auto speed based on other traffic" feature available in FSD) so I looked at the screen to check my current speed was where I wanted it. No joke, as I moved my eyes from the road to the speed limit it popped up again.. in that same instant.

I was pretty upset with it at this point. My first thought was "if I get 5 strikes or whatever it is... will I also lose base Autopilot as a punishment as well?" because I wasn't sure. It's not clear. As I was considering being w/o the Base Autopilot for our upcoming road trip and how annoying that would be we came up on a stop light. We were in the left lane and there was no cars in front of us. In the right lane was a single car that was already at a stop at the red light. The car made a borderline aggressive stop to signal and get behind the stopped car. Why? On the heals of the nanny BS in the previous paragraph that was it for me. I was done with this little experience. I went back to the middle option that is basically TACC and Lane keep, disabled all of the other "features" below that and effectively took our car back to Base Autopilot as best as possible.


► Conclusion:
All this FSD trial period did for me was confirm that FSD was laughable at $12k. I truly feel for all of those who paid for it. Even in 2024 many years after we were promised robo-taxis would be the norm. Tesla needs to stop forcing the unfinished version of FSD onto the average car driver. Simply put: it's terrifying in it's current state. People are already uneasy about letting a "computer" drive for them (with good reason) and then you reinforce this assumption with a dreadful and downright dangerous experience where the safety and very lives of them and their loved ones are at risk. Most don't realize that there are version short of FSD that actually offer a tremendous driver experience and a wonderful entry into letting a "computer" assist them with driving a car. Not only do they not need to force FSD in it's current stage upon the average consumer but they also need to stop working functions for future functions that aren't yet ready.

 

[Krugerrand]

Nobody is being forced. Dramatic much?

People without it are being shown how it works and given an opportunity to experience it. That is all. Use it. Don’t use it. Completely up to each individual.

 

[Dewg]

It's a legit bummer you had that experience. We've heard recently that HW4 cars are running v12 in emulation, since the training data was all on HW3. Not sure if that had anything to do with it.

The nags are definitely not normal. Many of us here have experimented and can easily look away from the road for anywhere from 5-9 seconds before being told to pay attention. When I read people who can only look away for 1-2 seconds, something doesn't seem right. My '21 MY rarely gets torque requests because I always let my left hand pull slightly down at 8 o'clock on the wheel, and I've never received a "pay attention" except for the times I forced it to test (which for me were about 7 seconds or so).

The only recommendation I have for you is to try a camera calibration. I do them every major point version, and definitely every major version. Example: I calibrate from v12.2 to v12.3, and v11 to v12. I don't recalibrate for minor point updates, like v12.3.1 to v12.3.2. I may be erroring on the side of caution a bit much with the major point updates, but at the very least recalibrate on major version changes.

I clean the cameras, format the USB thumb drive, reboot the car, and then clear the calibration data just before going on a multi-lane freeway (well marked). Drive in the middle lane until calibrated. Then exit the freeway and set up your Autopilot settings again (reactivate FSD, etc).

 

[AceG8tr]

My question: are you on v12 or v11? In my experience, a lot of what you described is fixed in 12. Or at least *much* better*. Maybe you need to give it another try.

 

[LostVector]

Warning: long detailed post ahead so get comfy if you choose to read it. I broke it up a little bit for those who want to read certain aspects.

► Overview:
This may be an unpopular opinion in this pro-Tesla community with many members to whom Tesla can do no wrong. I know that Tesla wants to get people to experience it in hopes they'll fall in love with it and not only buy it but tell others all about how amazing it is. The problem with this is that it's not there yet. Maybe one day, years from now, it will be. It's not there yet. So what they're doing is forcing people who have likely not experienced any form of AP themselves to experience full FSD as their first "dip of the toe into water" so to speak. This isn't a good idea. Those who have never experienced anything other than cruise control (I'm old enough to remember when this was a hotly contested feature along the lines of Autopilot) will be overwhelmed and not in the positive way that Elon thinks.


► Prime example:
A good friend of mine who's very into vehicles and tech who's also a smart fella bought himself a Model Y about 6-7 months ago. He'd been in our Teslas numerous times but had never really experienced any of the driver's aids himself. Just heard us talk about it so had at least an idea of what to expect with his. He took delivery and had 3-months of FSD trial. Gave it an honest trial and hated it. Now he will ONLY use TACC and nothing I can say about how great TACC + Lane Keep is will get him to even consider trying it again. I would label him as an average consumer, probably on the younger or more tech advanced side who would be most receptive to trying this sort of thing. In other words, the exact consumer Tesla is trying to convert. It's having the opposite effect based on new owners that I've talked to.


► Our first hand experience:
In my experience it's trash. I was pretty excited to get it as we have a trip coming up to Dallas which is an awful place to drive... even with good navigation which Teslas have. I was excited for the prospect of letting the car do the driving for us. We took delivery of our new Model Y that included the 1-month that everyone is currently getting along with the 3-months for self-referring for a total of 4 months. I even bragged to my wife when I discovered that those stacked when I was afraid they might overlap and I'd "only" get 3 months of use. I even joked that I sure hope I didn't get addicted and then feel compelled to buy it for $12k.

I went ahead and enabled it along with all of the related whiz-bang features, bells & whistles. We had a few hours worth of driving to do (city and highway both) so I thought it would be a great test since it was in areas we lived in and near so I knew them well.

At first I thought it was neat. But the more I used it, the worse it got. I had "Mad Max" and "Aggressive" set and the car was anything but those. Whenever it encountered a stop sign at an intersection, even if there was no cars or pedestrians in site, it would come to a full stop some 15ft before the line, wait about 5 seconds and then slowly creep forward to the line before stopping AGAIN. Why? What's the purpose of this. Then, it would proceed to take another 20 seconds or so to slowly make the turn through the intersection.

This was if there was ZERO cars, pedestrians or anything I would consider needed to be accounted for. Just a ghost town, an intersection and a single Tesla w/FSD enabled. In other words, a best case scenario. In all of these instances I didn't have someone behind me (thankfully) so I gave it full freedom to sort itself out. It was laughable.

This would magnified dramatically if there was any type of foliage, fence or other obstructions that was even close to the intersection. Not even in the line of site but just existed. It would creep a foot, stop, wait 5 seconds, creep another foot, stop, wait 5 seconds, creep another foot, wait 5 seconds... you get the point. It did this every. single. time. It was painful.

At one point, it tried to take us the wrong way down a one-way exit from a parking lot. I had to take over, stop it, reverse backwards back into the lot as cars were trying to exist a very busy road into the parking lot and had to sit and wait on me to sort things out since the lane was only wide enough for one vehicle, marked clearly as exit only multiple ways and curved for traffic coming into the parking lot.

On 4-lane highways it was doing all sorts of unexpected things. On one stretch of 65mph road we were the only vehicle within about a mile in any direction and, seemingly for no reason, it changed lanes from the right lane to the left lane. I assumed it wanted to be there so I just let it do it's things. About 30 seconds after establishing itself in the left lane, it then signaled and went back to the right lane, seemingly for no reason once again. I jokingly said it just passed a ghost car that wasn't there because it's behavior was about what you'd expect from passing a car on the highway doing a few mph less... but there was no car there.

Then, not 5min later, I came up on a car that was doing about 50mph in a 65mph zone. I had the offset of the car set to 11% so I was doing 72mph. The car came up behind the slower car and simply decreased speed to follow it at a safe distance at 50mph. There was not another car anywhere near us. I left it there for almost 2-painful-minutes to give it ample time to pass the slower car safely. I finally took over and manually passed to car to kick it back up to speed. Keep in mind that I have every user-setting available set to the most aggressive version possible as I'm not faint-of-heart when it comes to driving plus I've owned 9 Teslas now... 8 with AP of one form or another.

The last straw for me was a series of nanny alerts telling me to keep my eyes on the road to include one where it warned me to keep my eyes on the road after turning my head to check my blind spot before passing another car on a 4-lane highway. I had to look at the screen to see what it was on about and when I realized it wanted me to watch the road I looked back up to the road. Out of the corner of my eye I saw it go away so I knew I had satisfied it. It wasn't 10 seconds later I needed to look back at the screen since FSD was doing all sorts of weird things with the speed limit (it wouldn't recognize 65mph signs and would keep the "seen" sign at 45mph for a single multi-mile stretch that had several different 65mph signs along the way) to include going way above or way below my set speed (even after I disabled the stupid "auto speed based on other traffic" feature available in FSD) so I looked at the screen to check my current speed was where I wanted it. No joke, as I moved my eyes from the road to the speed limit it popped up again.. in that same instant.

I was pretty upset with it at this point. My first thought was "if I get 5 strikes or whatever it is... will I also lose base Autopilot as a punishment as well?" because I wasn't sure. It's not clear. As I was considering being w/o the Base Autopilot for our upcoming road trip and how annoying that would be we came up on a stop light. We were in the left lane and there was no cars in front of us. In the right lane was a single car that was already at a stop at the red light. The car made a borderline aggressive stop to signal and get behind the stopped car. Why? On the heals of the nanny BS in the previous paragraph that was it for me. I was done with this little experience. I went back to the middle option that is basically TACC and Lane keep, disabled all of the other "features" below that and effectively took our car back to Base Autopilot as best as possible.


► Conclusion:
All this FSD trial period did for me was confirm that FSD was laughable at $12k. I truly feel for all of those who paid for it. Even in 2024 many years after we were promised robo-taxis would be the norm. Tesla needs to stop forcing the unfinished version of FSD onto the average car driver. Simply put: it's terrifying in it's current state. People are already uneasy about letting a "computer" drive for them (with good reason) and then you reinforce this assumption with a dreadful and downright dangerous experience where the safety and very lives of them and their loved ones are at risk. Most don't realize that there are version short of FSD that actually offer a tremendous driver experience and a wonderful entry into letting a "computer" assist them with driving a car. Not only do they not need to force FSD in it's current stage upon the average consumer but they also need to stop working functions for future functions that aren't yet ready.

I wouldn't pay 12K for it but i did find it pretty useful. The lane change stuff is annoying, but my sweet spot was putting it in chill mode and just using the turn stalk to make it lane change (which I figured out does work on the second day). I do have lots of thoughts but i overall was much more positive about it than negative.

Interestingly I've never gotten a serious pay attention nag, maybe because I wear glasses?

 

[acm319]

Have to agree with the OP. I think Musk’s current attempt to show FSD to the world is going to back fire. To me 12.3 has been much worse than v11 (I'd be happy to trade anecdotes with anyone who thinks v12 is amazing) and has caused me to just give up on FSD beta, and increasingly I’m feeling like I’m over Tesla.

These forums and social media accounts that obsess over Tesla, are not representative of typical consumers let alone typical Tesla consumers. They are the 1% of Tesla fans…the early adopters…the die-hards. I’d bet 95%+ of people who own a vehicle have never visited a vehicle-branded fan forum. You just buy a car and move on with life. The problem is a massive feedback loop and lots and lots of motivated reasoning. It’s like going to a Chicago Cubs forum and talking about how awesome the 2024 Cubs are going to be. It’s objectively not objective. Musk sees influencers raving about how amazing v12 is and then assumes this reflects reality or a typical persons experience (note: this is why you “don’t get high on your own supply”).

I've had every version of FSD beta from 12.3 all the way back to 10.2 in October 2021, so I’ve witnessed the relatively slow pace of progress and various bumps along the way. Sure, over this time it has improved in many ways. And from time to time, I’ll have the fun "no intervention" drive that feels almost like magic. But in reality…anyone who is even mildly self-aware…realizes this whole thing is still just a fun party trick…a novelty for “early adopters.” It’s not a driver assist feature that takes the stress/hazard out of driving...and it's certainly not “FULL self-driving.” If you are at all in a hurry, just want to get to where you are going and don’t want to feel like babysitting your car…you aren’t using FSD. It’s just not reliable enough, and behaves in predictably irregular ways that are often stress inducing (like taking forever at stop signs, making poor lane selections, etc) or distressing to many passengers (jerkiness, improper acceleration/breaking).

The first year or so of playing around with FSD beta, I’ll admit that I got a decent amount of pleasure with it. I tend to be an early adopter of new technology and get joy out of watching technology progress. And it was fan to read peoples experience on these forums. But at some point, the novelty wears off and you just want your car to function in a reliable way.

I feel like I had gotten to a happy medium with FSD beta (not worth $12K, but definitely the initial $2K I paid during the one-time fire sale). I basically used it to overcome many of the shortcomings with regular autopilot. The map data for the area near my house has been ridiculously outdated for a few years due to historical road constitution (long in the past) and autopilot thinks a 65mph zone is 45. The 20-mile route I take to work is posted at 55mph but nobody drives below 65, even when cops are present. So FSD beta allowed me to correct for the 5mph limit in regular autopilot that made these drives more tolerable.

However, 12.3 has finally caused me to lose all faith in the future of Tesla’s FSD effort and actually start looking for a new vehicle. As others have noted…speed control in 12.3 is absurd (and 12.3.1 didn’t fix it) which has turned my drive into a non-stop effort of babysitting...and coaxing FSD to stay at the speed I set. And while lots of anecdotes on these forums suggest 12.3 is much improved, in my experience the improvements are still very marginal (my handful of test cases in the past week actually seemed worse than version 11). Even though we just got a brand-new model Y with the free FSD transfer…I’m seriously considering trading for a new vehicle. At this point all I want is (a) lane keep, (b) adaptive cruise control, and (c) the ability to set the speed at a specific speed limit that I choose…and now FSD has broken this. My mother in-laws 2-year-old Kia has these features (and her auto headlights/wipers work far better).

I think Musk, and Tesla FSD fans, are going to be very surprised when they come to realize…the size of the population interested in the novelty that is currently FSD beta is not that large. And the fact that v12 breaks user speed control…just might be the thing that causes people to rethink whether Tesla is really making any realistic progress at all.

 

[ewoodrick]

Sure, to some, it will be just like teaching a teenage driver and they will refuse to use it.

But to some, they will find out just how helpful it can be.

But in reading @Ostrichsak, except for a mapping error with the parking lot. It seems as if the car was actually driving pretty good. Which is a huge improvement over V11.

If all people will do is bitch about the new speed mechanism, then FSD 12.3 is a resounding success.

 

[Ostrichsak]

Nobody is being forced. Dramatic much?

People without it are being shown how it works and given an opportunity to experience it. That is all. Use it. Don’t use it. Completely up to each individual.

Right on queue.

It's a legit bummer you had that experience. We've heard recently that HW4 cars are running v12 in emulation, since the training data was all on HW3. Not sure if that had anything to do with it.

The nags are definitely not normal. Many of us here have experimented and can easily look away from the road for anywhere from 5-9 seconds before being told to pay attention. When I read people who can only look away for 1-2 seconds, something doesn't seem right. My '21 MY rarely gets torque requests because I always let my left hand pull slightly down at 8 o'clock on the wheel, and I've never received a "pay attention" except for the times I forced it to test (which for me were about 7 seconds or so).

The only recommendation I have for you is to try a camera calibration. I do them every major point version, and definitely every major version. Example: I calibrate from v12.2 to v12.3, and v11 to v12. I don't recalibrate for minor point updates, like v12.3.1 to v12.3.2. I may be erroring on the side of caution a bit much with the major point updates, but at the very least recalibrate on major version changes.

I clean the cameras, format the USB thumb drive, reboot the car, and then clear the calibration data just before going on a multi-lane freeway (well marked). Drive in the middle lane until calibrated. Then exit the freeway and set up your Autopilot settings again (reactivate FSD, etc).

But I shouldn't have to do any of this. Funny enough, the things you recommended I should to are actually what I did upon taking delivery of our new car... almost exactly as described. Accidentally, mind you.

My question: are you on v12 or v11? In my experience, a lot of what you described is fixed in 12. Or at least *much* better*. Maybe you need to give it another try.

I genuinely don't know the answer to this. I know our firmware version and it was a brand spankin' new car we took delivery of on Saturday and I even put it in "advanced" update mode in the menu when we took delivery.

I wouldn't pay 12K for it but i did find it pretty useful. The lane change stuff is annoying, but my sweet spot was putting it in chill mode and just using the turn stalk to make it lane change (which I figured out does work on the second day). I do have lots of thoughts but i overall was much more positive about it than negative.

Interestingly I've never gotten a serious pay attention nag, maybe because I wear glasses?

Why would I put it in chill mode? I love my older AP1 cars that I didn't have to put anything in any mode... I just set the follow distance to 1 car length and didn't have to worry about all of the other fine details. It was just a comfortable experience that literally removed all road rage from my life. I previously never even considered how I drove a negative until I owned a Tesla w/Autopilot. I probably added years to my life due to how stress-free my driving is now. This wasn't the case with FSD. The opposite in fact. I found myself stressing out about driving once again which was a foreign concept I wasn't at all happy with.

Have to agree with the OP. I think Musk’s current attempt to show FSD to the world is going to back fire. To me 12.3 has been much worse than v11 (I'd be happy to trade anecdotes with anyone who thinks v12 is amazing) and has caused me to just give up on FSD beta, and increasingly I’m feeling like I’m over Tesla.

These forums and social media accounts that obsess over Tesla, are not representative of typical consumers let alone typical Tesla consumers. They are the 1% of Tesla fans…the early adopters…the die-hards. I’d bet 95%+ of people who own a vehicle have never visited a vehicle-branded fan forum. You just buy a car and move on with life. The problem is a massive feedback loop and lots and lots of motivated reasoning. It’s like going to a Chicago Cubs forum and talking about how awesome the 2024 Cubs are going to be. It’s objectively not objective. Musk sees influencers raving about how amazing v12 is and then assumes this reflects reality or a typical persons experience (note: this is why you “don’t get high on your own supply”).

I've had every version of FSD beta from 12.3 all the way back to 10.2 in October 2021, so I’ve witnessed the relatively slow pace of progress and various bumps along the way. Sure, over this time it has improved in many ways. And from time to time, I’ll have the fun "no intervention" drive that feels almost like magic. But in reality…anyone who is even mildly self-aware…realizes this whole thing is still just a fun party trick…a novelty for “early adopters.” It’s not a driver assist feature that takes the stress/hazard out of driving...and it's certainly not “FULL self-driving.” If you are at all in a hurry, just want to get to where you are going and don’t want to feel like babysitting your car…you aren’t using FSD. It’s just not reliable enough, and behaves in predictably irregular ways that are often stress inducing (like taking forever at stop signs, making poor lane selections, etc) or distressing to many passengers (jerkiness, improper acceleration/breaking).

The first year or so of playing around with FSD beta, I’ll admit that I got a decent amount of pleasure with it. I tend to be an early adopter of new technology and get joy out of watching technology progress. And it was fan to read peoples experience on these forums. But at some point, the novelty wears off and you just want your car to function in a reliable way.

I feel like I had gotten to a happy medium with FSD beta (not worth $12K, but definitely the initial $2K I paid during the one-time fire sale). I basically used it to overcome many of the shortcomings with regular autopilot. The map data for the area near my house has been ridiculously outdated for a few years due to historical road constitution (long in the past) and autopilot thinks a 65mph zone is 45. The 20-mile route I take to work is posted at 55mph but nobody drives below 65, even when cops are present. So FSD beta allowed me to correct for the 5mph limit in regular autopilot that made these drives more tolerable.

However, 12.3 has finally caused me to lose all faith in the future of Tesla’s FSD effort and actually start looking for a new vehicle. As others have noted…speed control in 12.3 is absurd (and 12.3.1 didn’t fix it) which has turned my drive into a non-stop effort of babysitting...and coaxing FSD to stay at the speed I set. And while lots of anecdotes on these forums suggest 12.3 is much improved, in my experience the improvements are still very marginal (my handful of test cases in the past week actually seemed worse than version 11). Even though we just got a brand-new model Y with the free FSD transfer…I’m seriously considering trading for a new vehicle. At this point all I want is (a) lane keep, (b) adaptive cruise control, and (c) the ability to set the speed at a specific speed limit that I choose…and now FSD has broken this. My mother in-laws 2-year-old Kia has these features (and her auto headlights/wipers work far better).

I think Musk, and Tesla FSD fans, are going to be very surprised when they come to realize…the size of the population interested in the novelty that is currently FSD beta is not that large. And the fact that v12 breaks user speed control…just might be the thing that causes people to rethink whether Tesla is really making any realistic progress at all.

This. All of it.

Sure, to some, it will be just like teaching a teenage driver and they will refuse to use it.

But to some, they will find out just how helpful it can be.

But in reading @Ostrichsak, except for a mapping error with the parking lot. It seems as if the car was actually driving pretty good. Which is a huge improvement over V11.

If all people will do is bitch about the new speed mechanism, then FSD 12.3 is a resounding success.

If that's seriously what you took from my post, you may need to re-read it. If you still come away with the same summary, well, I guess I failed to properly describe my frustration with the system. That or maybe I misunderstood what your post is saying and maybe instead you're saying that it is truly awful at doing the very things it's proclaimed to be capable of and it's working properly.

 

[ewoodrick]

If that's seriously what you took from my post, you may need to re-read it. If you still come away with the same summary, well, I guess I failed to properly describe my frustration with the system. That or maybe I misunderstood what your post is saying and maybe instead you're saying that it is truly awful at doing the very things it's proclaimed to be capable of and it's working properly.

You just said it "my frustration with the system"

I've owned FSD for 6 years, I've driven with the different versions of it every day.

The current version is capable of driving significant distances on it's on, safely. There may be places where it doesn't go as fast as I'd like, there are places where it goes faster than I like. It's the exact same with my wife.
Last week I took it out and let it control the car for over 100 miles. There was only one time when the car was about to do something that I didn't like. And that was on a small mountain road with steep drop-offs and tight turns and an intersection in a curve that it just didn't quite seem to understand.

As with anyone driving a car that you are in, it takes trust.

 

[LostVector]

Why would I put it in chill mode? I love my older AP1 cars that I didn't have to put anything in any mode... I just set the follow distance to 1 car length and didn't have to worry about all of the other fine details. It was just a comfortable experience that literally removed all road rage from my life. I previously never even considered how I drove a negative until I owned a Tesla w/Autopilot. I probably added years to my life due to how stress-free my driving is now. This wasn't the case with FSD. The opposite in fact. I found myself stressing out about driving once again which was a foreign concept I wasn't at all happy with.

I don't know, why wouldn't you? I've only driven it for one day so far, but in chill mode on the highway it seemed to be just autopilot with FSD lane changes that I can activate with a stalk. That was a plus for me.

I did encounter some annoyances with the speed limit constantly going under flow on smaller / more rural highways. I'm optimistic that will be fixed.

Anyway my point was more about my own sweet spot ... doesn't have to be yours.

 

[Krugerrand]

Right on queue.

Absolutely. I’ll call out needless drama and outright fabrication all day long, every day. So next time maybe skip the media type clickbait bs forum headline. K?

FYI, I have the latest version on my car. I know exactly how it drives compared to every version since the beginning of the 3. Results can vary depending on whether you’re a Kardashian or not.

 

[Ostrichsak]

You just said it "my frustration with the system"

I've owned FSD for 6 years, I've driven with the different versions of it every day.

The current version is capable of driving significant distances on it's on, safely. There may be places where it doesn't go as fast as I'd like, there are places where it goes faster than I like. It's the exact same with my wife.
Last week I took it out and let it control the car for over 100 miles. There was only one time when the car was about to do something that I didn't like. And that was on a small mountain road with steep drop-offs and tight turns and an intersection in a curve that it just didn't quite seem to understand.

As with anyone driving a car that you are in, it takes trust.

If I trusted it 100% it would get me in an accident, based on my first-hand experience. It's not a trust issue. It's still not good enough to be pushing out to everyone on a trial basis.

I don't know, why wouldn't you? I've only driven it for one day so far, but in chill mode on the highway it seemed to be just autopilot with FSD lane changes that I can activate with a stalk. That was a plus for me.

I did encounter some annoyances with the speed limit constantly going under flow on smaller / more rural highways. I'm optimistic that will be fixed.

Anyway my point was more about my own sweet spot ... doesn't have to be yours.

I don't think you fully understand what "Chill" mode does and does not do.

 

[Krugerrand]

I don't know, why wouldn't you? I've only driven it for one day so far, but in chill mode on the highway it seemed to be just autopilot with FSD lane changes that I can activate with a stalk. That was a plus for me.

I did encounter some annoyances with the speed limit constantly going under flow on smaller / more rural highways. I'm optimistic that will be fixed.

Anyway my point was more about my own sweet spot ... doesn't have to be yours.

Indeed, why wouldn’t someone try out different settings to see which style they preferred? Common sense.

I get that underflow of speed as well. I found if I accelerate (while in FSD) to the desired top speed selected it would hold there or very close to there, until it encountered something it wasn’t entirely sure about, then it had a tendency to underflow again but not always.

 

[Ostrichsak]

Absolutely. I’ll call out needless drama and outright fabrication all day long, every day. So next time maybe skip the media type clickbait bs forum headline. K?

FYI, I have the latest version on my car. I know exactly how it drives compared to every version since the beginning of the 3. Results can vary depending on whether you’re a Kardashian or not.

Sure thing! Want to provide your address so that I can ship my keyboard to you so you can type it up for me too? /sarcasm

 

[fholbert]

Warning: long detailed post ahead so get comfy if you choose to read it. I broke it up a little bit for those who want to read certain aspects.

► Overview:
This may be an unpopular opinion in this pro-Tesla community with many members to whom Tesla can do no wrong. I know that Tesla wants to get people to experience it in hopes they'll fall in love with it and not only buy it but tell others all about how amazing it is. The problem with this is that it's not there yet. Maybe one day, years from now, it will be. It's not there yet. So what they're doing is forcing people who have likely not experienced any form of AP themselves to experience full FSD as their first "dip of the toe into water" so to speak. This isn't a good idea. Those who have never experienced anything other than cruise control (I'm old enough to remember when this was a hotly contested feature along the lines of Autopilot) will be overwhelmed and not in the positive way that Elon thinks.


► Prime example:
A good friend of mine who's very into vehicles and tech who's also a smart fella bought himself a Model Y about 6-7 months ago. He'd been in our Teslas numerous times but had never really experienced any of the driver's aids himself. Just heard us talk about it so had at least an idea of what to expect with his. He took delivery and had 3-months of FSD trial. Gave it an honest trial and hated it. Now he will ONLY use TACC and nothing I can say about how great TACC + Lane Keep is will get him to even consider trying it again. I would label him as an average consumer, probably on the younger or more tech advanced side who would be most receptive to trying this sort of thing. In other words, the exact consumer Tesla is trying to convert. It's having the opposite effect based on new owners that I've talked to.


► Our first hand experience:
In my experience it's trash. I was pretty excited to get it as we have a trip coming up to Dallas which is an awful place to drive... even with good navigation which Teslas have. I was excited for the prospect of letting the car do the driving for us. We took delivery of our new Model Y that included the 1-month that everyone is currently getting along with the 3-months for self-referring for a total of 4 months. I even bragged to my wife when I discovered that those stacked when I was afraid they might overlap and I'd "only" get 3 months of use. I even joked that I sure hope I didn't get addicted and then feel compelled to buy it for $12k.

I went ahead and enabled it along with all of the related whiz-bang features, bells & whistles. We had a few hours worth of driving to do (city and highway both) so I thought it would be a great test since it was in areas we lived in and near so I knew them well.

At first I thought it was neat. But the more I used it, the worse it got. I had "Mad Max" and "Aggressive" set and the car was anything but those. Whenever it encountered a stop sign at an intersection, even if there was no cars or pedestrians in site, it would come to a full stop some 15ft before the line, wait about 5 seconds and then slowly creep forward to the line before stopping AGAIN. Why? What's the purpose of this. Then, it would proceed to take another 20 seconds or so to slowly make the turn through the intersection.

This was if there was ZERO cars, pedestrians or anything I would consider needed to be accounted for. Just a ghost town, an intersection and a single Tesla w/FSD enabled. In other words, a best case scenario. In all of these instances I didn't have someone behind me (thankfully) so I gave it full freedom to sort itself out. It was laughable.

This would magnified dramatically if there was any type of foliage, fence or other obstructions that was even close to the intersection. Not even in the line of site but just existed. It would creep a foot, stop, wait 5 seconds, creep another foot, stop, wait 5 seconds, creep another foot, wait 5 seconds... you get the point. It did this every. single. time. It was painful.

At one point, it tried to take us the wrong way down a one-way exit from a parking lot. I had to take over, stop it, reverse backwards back into the lot as cars were trying to exist a very busy road into the parking lot and had to sit and wait on me to sort things out since the lane was only wide enough for one vehicle, marked clearly as exit only multiple ways and curved for traffic coming into the parking lot.

On 4-lane highways it was doing all sorts of unexpected things. On one stretch of 65mph road we were the only vehicle within about a mile in any direction and, seemingly for no reason, it changed lanes from the right lane to the left lane. I assumed it wanted to be there so I just let it do it's things. About 30 seconds after establishing itself in the left lane, it then signaled and went back to the right lane, seemingly for no reason once again. I jokingly said it just passed a ghost car that wasn't there because it's behavior was about what you'd expect from passing a car on the highway doing a few mph less... but there was no car there.

Then, not 5min later, I came up on a car that was doing about 50mph in a 65mph zone. I had the offset of the car set to 11% so I was doing 72mph. The car came up behind the slower car and simply decreased speed to follow it at a safe distance at 50mph. There was not another car anywhere near us. I left it there for almost 2-painful-minutes to give it ample time to pass the slower car safely. I finally took over and manually passed to car to kick it back up to speed. Keep in mind that I have every user-setting available set to the most aggressive version possible as I'm not faint-of-heart when it comes to driving plus I've owned 9 Teslas now... 8 with AP of one form or another.

The last straw for me was a series of nanny alerts telling me to keep my eyes on the road to include one where it warned me to keep my eyes on the road after turning my head to check my blind spot before passing another car on a 4-lane highway. I had to look at the screen to see what it was on about and when I realized it wanted me to watch the road I looked back up to the road. Out of the corner of my eye I saw it go away so I knew I had satisfied it. It wasn't 10 seconds later I needed to look back at the screen since FSD was doing all sorts of weird things with the speed limit (it wouldn't recognize 65mph signs and would keep the "seen" sign at 45mph for a single multi-mile stretch that had several different 65mph signs along the way) to include going way above or way below my set speed (even after I disabled the stupid "auto speed based on other traffic" feature available in FSD) so I looked at the screen to check my current speed was where I wanted it. No joke, as I moved my eyes from the road to the speed limit it popped up again.. in that same instant.

I was pretty upset with it at this point. My first thought was "if I get 5 strikes or whatever it is... will I also lose base Autopilot as a punishment as well?" because I wasn't sure. It's not clear. As I was considering being w/o the Base Autopilot for our upcoming road trip and how annoying that would be we came up on a stop light. We were in the left lane and there was no cars in front of us. In the right lane was a single car that was already at a stop at the red light. The car made a borderline aggressive stop to signal and get behind the stopped car. Why? On the heals of the nanny BS in the previous paragraph that was it for me. I was done with this little experience. I went back to the middle option that is basically TACC and Lane keep, disabled all of the other "features" below that and effectively took our car back to Base Autopilot as best as possible.


► Conclusion:
All this FSD trial period did for me was confirm that FSD was laughable at $12k. I truly feel for all of those who paid for it. Even in 2024 many years after we were promised robo-taxis would be the norm. Tesla needs to stop forcing the unfinished version of FSD onto the average car driver. Simply put: it's terrifying in it's current state. People are already uneasy about letting a "computer" drive for them (with good reason) and then you reinforce this assumption with a dreadful and downright dangerous experience where the safety and very lives of them and their loved ones are at risk. Most don't realize that there are version short of FSD that actually offer a tremendous driver experience and a wonderful entry into letting a "computer" assist them with driving a car. Not only do they not need to force FSD in it's current stage upon the average consumer but they also need to stop working functions for future functions that aren't yet ready.

For a guy who regularly claims to be smarter than everyone else, you sure missed the boat on this one.

 

[Ostrichsak]

For a guy who claims to be smarter than everyone else you sure missed the boat on this one.

Where did I say I'm smarter than everyone else?

 

[BitJam]

Eight days ago Elon said their FSD training was no longer compute constrained. This means they need more data in order to advancing at the fastest pace possible and get the most out of all those shiny new computers they just bought. In addition, Tesla may be reaching diminishing returns from the pool of beta testers. Elon has discussed this problem several times, saying improvements eventually become logarithmic (very very slow). He also said they probably over-fit to the SF Bay Area (to the detriment of it working well elsewhere). So they need more data from a wider group of people and from other parts of the country.

A day after Elon tells us they need more data, he announces a plan to get a lot more data from new people and from new areas. Most seem to be taking him up on his offer and are giving him more data. This is going exactly as planned. It doesn't seem to be back-firing or counter-productive.

In 2021 Elon said:

We need to make Full Self-Driving work in order for it to be a compelling value proposition.​

​

You seem to agree FSD is not yet actually full self-driving. Tesla is trying to make it work as quickly as humanly possible. The one month free trial for everyone is a part of the plan to eventually get it to work. This is not a Mission Accomplished moment. It's a response to needing more data.

 

[eli_]

I wonder if v12 is overfit to people who spent years using the FSD beta and uploading tons of snapshots of their trips. My car alone has uploaded over a terabyte of video at this point (guesstimating from the wifi traffic records). And with V12 the performance has gotten very good for the most part.

 

[ewoodrick]

If I trusted it 100% it would get me in an accident, based on my first-hand experience. It's not a trust issue. It's still not good enough to be pushing out to everyone on a trial basis.

And I pretty much trust everyone to get me into an accident.

It's still beta software. It hasn't been released yet.

But you are still the driver, you are still responsible. And I know that at this point, it can handle the vast majority of my driving without the need for me to take over.

 

[hahler2]

Have to agree with the OP. I think Musk’s current attempt to show FSD to the world is going to back fire. To me 12.3 has been much worse than v11 (I'd be happy to trade anecdotes with anyone who thinks v12 is amazing) and has caused me to just give up on FSD beta, and increasingly I’m feeling like I’m over Tesla.

These forums and social media accounts that obsess over Tesla, are not representative of typical consumers let alone typical Tesla consumers. They are the 1% of Tesla fans…the early adopters…the die-hards. I’d bet 95%+ of people who own a vehicle have never visited a vehicle-branded fan forum. You just buy a car and move on with life. The problem is a massive feedback loop and lots and lots of motivated reasoning. It’s like going to a Chicago Cubs forum and talking about how awesome the 2024 Cubs are going to be. It’s objectively not objective. Musk sees influencers raving about how amazing v12 is and then assumes this reflects reality or a typical persons experience (note: this is why you “don’t get high on your own supply”).

I've had every version of FSD beta from 12.3 all the way back to 10.2 in October 2021, so I’ve witnessed the relatively slow pace of progress and various bumps along the way. Sure, over this time it has improved in many ways. And from time to time, I’ll have the fun "no intervention" drive that feels almost like magic. But in reality…anyone who is even mildly self-aware…realizes this whole thing is still just a fun party trick…a novelty for “early adopters.” It’s not a driver assist feature that takes the stress/hazard out of driving...and it's certainly not “FULL self-driving.” If you are at all in a hurry, just want to get to where you are going and don’t want to feel like babysitting your car…you aren’t using FSD. It’s just not reliable enough, and behaves in predictably irregular ways that are often stress inducing (like taking forever at stop signs, making poor lane selections, etc) or distressing to many passengers (jerkiness, improper acceleration/breaking).

The first year or so of playing around with FSD beta, I’ll admit that I got a decent amount of pleasure with it. I tend to be an early adopter of new technology and get joy out of watching technology progress. And it was fan to read peoples experience on these forums. But at some point, the novelty wears off and you just want your car to function in a reliable way.

I feel like I had gotten to a happy medium with FSD beta (not worth $12K, but definitely the initial $2K I paid during the one-time fire sale). I basically used it to overcome many of the shortcomings with regular autopilot. The map data for the area near my house has been ridiculously outdated for a few years due to historical road constitution (long in the past) and autopilot thinks a 65mph zone is 45. The 20-mile route I take to work is posted at 55mph but nobody drives below 65, even when cops are present. So FSD beta allowed me to correct for the 5mph limit in regular autopilot that made these drives more tolerable.

However, 12.3 has finally caused me to lose all faith in the future of Tesla’s FSD effort and actually start looking for a new vehicle. As others have noted…speed control in 12.3 is absurd (and 12.3.1 didn’t fix it) which has turned my drive into a non-stop effort of babysitting...and coaxing FSD to stay at the speed I set. And while lots of anecdotes on these forums suggest 12.3 is much improved, in my experience the improvements are still very marginal (my handful of test cases in the past week actually seemed worse than version 11). Even though we just got a brand-new model Y with the free FSD transfer…I’m seriously considering trading for a new vehicle. At this point all I want is (a) lane keep, (b) adaptive cruise control, and (c) the ability to set the speed at a specific speed limit that I choose…and now FSD has broken this. My mother in-laws 2-year-old Kia has these features (and her auto headlights/wipers work far better).

I think Musk, and Tesla FSD fans, are going to be very surprised when they come to realize…the size of the population interested in the novelty that is currently FSD beta is not that large. And the fact that v12 breaks user speed control…just might be the thing that causes people to rethink whether Tesla is really making any realistic progress at all.

The speed assist (or whatever it's called, can't remember at the moment) can be turned off can't it? Just go back to manually adjusting the speed like you did before 12.3. Not really worth trading for a different vehicle cause of it.