I first wrote about Tesla – – – a car very few people had heard of at the time – in March of 2013 here on Slope. The post was simply an examination of my experience of buying my Tesla Model S and my impressions of it (which were extremely positive). I’ll just mention that the $90,000 I put into the car would be worth $9,000,000 today if I had simply bought TSLA at the time instead, but, umm, let’s not go there. Suffice it to say that my gushing, glowing over-the-top review of Tesla was spot-on, and that the company has been insanely successful.
Thus, being such an early adopter, it’s rather odd that only now would I be getting into the whole full self-driving thing, but I have an excuse. My car was incapable of it. The hardware was too old.
That all changed Christmas Eve. We picked up our second Tesla (and ditched our Lexus), a brand new dual motor Model Y with the Full Self Driving feature. Unlike my super-long review mentioned above, I just wanted to say a few words about my impressions of FSD, since I’ve logged, gosh, about 15 miles of it under my belt so far.
In a nutshell, it feels kind of janky. You can definitely sense the decision-making going on, and it is “chunked” in such a way that a human doesn’t really drive. I have had to intervene a number of times, because I didn’t feel safe, even though it probably would have been fine. But I’m not into “probably” when it comes to being in a moving car.
A few oddities I’ve encountered so far in my very, very brief experience:
- There’s an onramp to the freeway near my house which has a stop light. The sign warns you that no right turn is not permitted on a red, so you have to wait for a green to proceed to the on ramp. Well, my car had other ideas, and after it stopped completely, it was quite ready to proceed and get me on the freeway, even though the light was red. Not good!
- On the other hand, it takes Stop signs way, way too seriously. To most people, a stop sign means slow down to a few miles per hour, make sure there’s not traffic, then proceed. A rolling stop, in other words. Not so with FSD. Because NHTSA demanded it, the FSD has to slow to 0.0 miles per hour, and THEN get you going again. It feels really annoying and embarrassing, but the government insisted, even though no one else drives like that.
- It also takes the speed limits within a given area very seriously. For example, I was leaving the Home Depot parking lot, and there’s a straightaway that goes out to the main road. People tend to drive about 15 to 20 miles per hour on that stretch, because it’s straight and rather long, but as far as FSD was concerned, the speed limit “in the parking lot” was 5, yes 5 MPH, so that’s precisely what it did. No one was behind me, and I’m deliberately letting FSD do its thing (because I am observing and learning), but good God, it felt ridiculous to be creeping along at a snail’s pace.
I will hasten to make an important distinction. The public FSD is version number 11. The one whose foundation my beloved boy created is 12, and it’s fundamentally and utterly different. I haven’t driven it, nor can I, but when it comes out, I look forward to feeling just how different it is and writing my reflections on it when that time comes.
In the meanwhile, if you get behind a new Tesla going 5 miles per hour, it’s probably me.
