Well, I did a 200 mile round trip drive in my 2021 Model Y today to pick up my Mother-in-law to get her to our house for Thanksgiving. I knew this drive was coming up, and I have several other drives coming up after this week, including during Christmas break, so I thought I would give FSD another go to see how well it performs compared to the last time I tried it.
My goal today was to attempt to drive from door to door and back completely on FSD without any intervention...I barely made it out of the neighborhood before my first intervention. My next 4 interventions all came in the next couple of miles of driving through our small town. It is extremely tentative on turns, and when faced with a tight situation with cars on both sides of the road and a pickup coming from the opposite direction, it almost came to a dead stop. Once I got out of town, it was capable of navigating almost the entire rest of the trip except for the PA Turnpike toll booths which seemed to be a total random selection and positioned me in the wrong lane coming out on the other side.
Overall, I really like the lane change feature, and honestly, that is about it, and that comes with Enhanced Autopilot for "only" $6000 (no monthly subscription, which is a shame because I would do this more often for $100/month). Everything else it does is just not polished and nowhere near human like in the way it drives. Honestly, around traffic and driving around the community, it causes more stress than it is worth.
Here is my list of all the issues I experienced today:
Turns are way too shallow. On Left turns, it cuts the corner so short that if there is a car coming from the left (at a stop), it would have to change direction quickly to avoid a collision. On right turns, it insists on moving the car out of well marked/painted lanes into the shoulder when that isn't necessary at all.
I encountered an emergency crew that was attending to a small fender bender which was blocking our direction of traffic, but their was a wide open area painted with yellow hashes that was usable to get past without getting into oncoming traffic. There is no way FSD was getting through this on its own.
Reduced Speed Zones - the vehicle waits until it get TO the speed limit sign and then rapidly reduces speed. This makes the ride uncomfortable. It would be nice if the car saw the sign in advance and spread the deceleration over a longer distance to improve passenger comfort. The other direction, moving to faster speed zones, the car does well to smoothly accelerate, in fact, it could accelerate a little faster in my opinion if you ask me.
Not good at anticipating the best lanes to be in for several situations. At the Harrisburg East toll booth (exit), the best place to be is as far left as you can get as you need to be in the far left lane eventually beyond the tolls. Same for when we get off at the Morgantown (PA) exit. In Harrisburg, the vehicle actually want all the way to the right and I had to intervien to get all the way over to the left (didn't trust the car to do this). Another example of this was getting off of 81 S onto a road that was two lanes in my travel direction and I needed to be over in the left lane. It wasn't doing it on its own.
At the very end, there is a very sharp right turn off of the main road onto a side street that happens at the bottom of a pretty steep hill. FSD was NOT slowing down soon enough and fast enough on its own to make the turn in my opinion, so I took over.
My final issue is minor, but I should be able to mark a spot in the driveways of the homes I am going to, and FSD should turn onto the driveway and up to the house. As it functions right now, it stops navigation on the street "near" the destination.
At the time of writing this blog post, FSD costs $12,000 to purchase and $200/month to subscribe. In my opinion, its current capabilities just doesn't justify the cost right now. For the occasional period where someone is driving a few long trips, it isn't bad to have for a month here or there for the lane change feature, but otherwise, the basic Autopilot is good enough. The "AI" version might be coming soon to all Tesla models.
For those that don't know, basic Autopilot will keep your car in its lane (best to have well painted lanes on the road), adaptive cruise control, and when safety requires it, it will reduce the speed of your vehicle to safely navigate a curve in the road. It does NOT recognize stop signs or traffic lights, and it will not make turns along your route. It also will not change lanes when behind slower moving traffic whe adaptive cruise control is on. The driver must disengage AP, make the lane change, then re-engage AP. It's not a big deal, but it triggers a series of bells and dings, so if you have sleeping passengers, it can be somewhat of a pain. WITH FSD... if Lane change minimized is turned on, the driver needs to put on the turn signal in most situations to cause the vehicle to change lanes, but it does all the work and does this when the lane is open to make the change. If minimizing lane changing is off, the FSD just does it when it needs to. Once in the passing lane, it doesn't seem to go back to the right lane unless the driver signals to make the vehicle return to the "slow" lane.
This test today was conducted on my 2021 Tesla Model Y with SW 2023.38.8