Here are some really great FSD examples from my first full day. I do have an XP90D with radar, so I am able to compare fairly well. All examples here were on a 4-5 line highway with on/off ramps and going about 62mph. Car was in AP with auto lane change enabled - so I had hands on wheel but just to be safe.
1) Car knew it needed to get into the right line to prepare for an exit about a mile ahead. It was in the third lane from the right. It signaled to move over to the right, all clear, began to move right and was about halfway into the lane when some crazy SUV from two lanes over on the right just veered right into my target lane to go to the lane I was coming from. It may have been 20 feet ahead of me and just moved diagonally at 60+ mph. The Y was perfect. It continued to move into the target lane, but it “saw” the swerving car and slowed down to let it go in front of us and the other moved through the two lanes. The Y then got back up to speed in the correct lane and all was fine. It was super smooth, no crazy hard braking, etc. I was super impressed as it needed to get the distance just right and had no radar.
2) Again, car was moving to exit lane. However, there was a tractor trailer to my right and we were effectively going the same speed. My max speed was 62, but traffic was going about 55. The car showed its target to my right, but also showed the truck as red and so I knew we weren’t going to swipe it. The Y also “saw” the car ahead of the tractor trailer. After a minute or so of going side by side with the truck, the AP realized it needed to do something to get over. It sped up to 62 (my max) passing the tractor trailer, then it slowed so it wouldn’t pass the truck in front of the trailer, and it moved into the lane perfectly at speed. It was super cool.
3) Same as #2, but for whatever reason, the car chose to let the truck go ahead. So, in this case, it slowed, “saw” there was no car behind the truck, and once the truck passed, it got into the lane behind the truck to exit.
All was incredibly smooth, no phantom braking despite several bridges, bright sun, etc. I was incredibly impressed as someone who was terrified to have a car without radar. It handled the three situations above much better and smarter than my X would have. I think my X would’ve had me take over in scenario 1. The visualizations are very clear and gave me a lot of comfort we weren’t going to slam into something.
The only thing I noticed is it requires a lot more “force” on the wheel when you get the AP “alert”. With my X, if my hands are on the wheel, it almost never needs me to “shake” the wheel. With the Y, there were a couple times where I had to move the wheel so much to get the alert to go away, that it actually turned off auto steer and I had to re-engage.
There’s definitely a long way to go, but darn if it wasn’t super cool to see it “think” and make the right decisions.
Long AP post for a delivery thread, but wanted to counterbalance some of the negative FSD feedback.
that’s how they delivered it to me
