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FSD on older Model3s
- Thread starter xav-
- Start date
Yep. Buy it, then schedule the HW3 install. It'll be free. Mobile techs have been known to do the work.
Cameras are not replaced as part of the HW3 upgrade.
The HW3 upgrade came out a few years before the upgraded cameras.
The SO and I thought so, but it was something of a debate, where we were swapping back and forth on who was pro and who was con. Things that tipped it for her 2021 MY:
- Long term: Safety. We made a minor bet that Robotaxi is Coming. Tesla is big on reporting that cars running Autopilot of various flavors have accident rates 3 to 5 times less than the general population of cars out there. Even when there’s some argument about how the numbers are calculated. A single accident costs far more than $2k. FSDS will be part of that, but on city streets, and we’re both impressed with 12.3.x’s performance on my M3.
- Price of the option is unlikely to stay low for the long term. At $2k, for us, it’s within discretionary income levels.
Turns out that both of us have gotten used to driving at high speeds on LK/TACC. While staying in lane wasn’t too bad, both of us were having a little trouble running at a steady high speed. In a few years of AP, we’d managed to get rusty. Getting full FSDS for city streets means more of that over time.
So we swore to each other that we’d practice driving manually, often, just like pilots of airliners do, and stay in practice.
Then pulled the trigger and bought it.
Not asked of me, but I had a condensation issue with one of my side repeater cameras that disabled the use of autopilot until fixed. They used a newer one to replace so I have one of each. When I look at both cameras in the day I don’t see any difference. At night the right one has light bleed with the turn signal but left doesn’t.
I bought FSD but don’t get HW3 upgrade until next week.
Did you get the one month trial?
I've had EAP, and have been testing FSDb since Thanksgiving. On the highway, there's no difference, as I think the software stack is the same. My understanding due to compute restraints they haven't been working on updating the highway stack. However, that was a while ago, before Tesla increased their compute capacity, so presumably they're working on it and will have the highway software updated soon, as well. But I don't drive highways too often, so I haven't noticed. Maybe, they've already updated it!
However, on my roads, backcountry roads, having FSDb is great. Being retired, I go skiing 2 to 3x a week, and FSDb handles backcountry roads extremely well. 80 miles there, 80 miles back, and it's slowly improved so that now, I can do the trip without disengagements. I have lots of construction zones since we've had tons of bad weather requiring road repairs, power line repairs, so the current V12 manages them so much better than V11.
Overall, there are so many tiny improvements of this or that, since V12, that the list would be too long to type out. The quick answer is the system is so smoooothhh. Very human-like which is important, because then it creates little anxiety for the driver or passengers. It responds the way I would. I don't jerk the steering wheel around. The car used to do that, when it was positioning the car to make a turn. Very disconcerting to have the wheel swing back and forth, fast. I called it the thumb breaker.
Having said that, I did test EAP on these same backcountry roads, just to get a baseline of how FSDb compares, and it's night and day. EAP could do it. But, it required plenty of close monitoring. If there was a curve, EAP would not slow before the curve, but in the middle of it, not very humanlike. FSDb slows before a curve, just like you would.
Since I've been paying $99 a month testing FSDb since Thanksgiving, I've been hooked like Tronguy. When the system isn't available, I'm forced to drive myself, and I found it quite hard, when you're tired after a long day of skiing! Haha. I eventually set up 2 profiles, one with EAP, so if FSDb becomes unavailable, I can revert to EAP.
Now that FSD is $2k, that's only 20months @ $99, and since I think I'll keep my car for at least another year, and maybe longer, I think it's worth it. It's a clear improvement over EAP, and you can use it on surface roads. And, it's improving quickly.
Since my model 3 is a 2018, I have the older HW and don’t qualify for the 1 month trial.
My wife has a performance model Y with the newer hardware but am still waiting for her 1 month trial to try it out. All my friends have gotten the 1 month trial but my model Y seems to have been skipped or am still waiting.
I've been kicked off myself for this "infraction" and have discovered that you only need to pull to the side of the road (if possible to do so safely), put the car in park and then immediately back into drive to continue your trip with AP.
that fixed light bleed or after HW3 install?
Before the HW3 install, the cameras pretty much looked the same, but there is zero purple light bleed at night when blinkers are on. Just look at your side repeater footage at night, that's what it looks like all the time even when blinkers are on
After HW3 upgrade, the colors just look a bit more natural. The following are taken a few days apart in a near same parking spot. These are the SAME repeater cams in both images.
Before HW3:
After HW3:
ODWms
Member
I had kept putting off replacing my cameras or otherwise looking into having the red bleed issue fixed for some time. Glad I did (I’m a serial procrastinator), because the issue seems to have corrected itself in updates. It was so subtle that I hadn’t even noticed it until my wife pointed it out.
The hardware upgrade is free if you buy FSD. If you only do the monthly subscription it is $1000.
PianoAl
Active Member
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