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.
