FSD beta expansion to new beta testers June 2022

[Tronguy]

-snippage

As far as the idea of the team being in disarray goes, my experience has been that loss of a boss had a positive effect on productivity and morale. At least until the new boss showed up!

Ha. You've got a point.

As has been noted, I'm of the electronics persuasion. The best boss my group ever had was a mechanical engineering type. Since EE wasn't his field, we could tell him anything and he'd believe us.

But we didn't abuse it, not one bit. The advantage of him being like that is that, unlike the years-out-of-actual-development EE bosses who were decidedly rusty on their development chops, he wasn't in possession of the knowledge that would allow him to comment. We would come up with solutions, present the fait accomplis, and Get Work Done, Fast. We and everybody around us were more productive in the year he was with it than we had been in years.

When he left to pick up an opportunity more in his technical field, the goodbye card had be sized nearly 8.5"x11" and there were hundreds of signatures crammed onto it wishing him the best. Some of us made a point of going outside our company to tell his new underlings, in another company, even, what a jewel they had. Point was, wrong field or no, he had been a great manager. We missed him.

 

[kbecks13]

It's been quite a time since an FSDb update. There's been quite a few bugs detected in FSDb, as reported on the forums here and elsewhere. Remember, the reason that Tesla hands out invites for FSDb it to get the software tested and bugs reported, not so people can have fun with the latest and greatest. (And, given the general jerkiness of driving around with FSDb, it's not exactly, "fun" anyway.)

I have a different view on this, I am quite certain that the FSD beta program exists purely to "show off" the software that Tesla is developing and mainly aimed at impressing investors and reassuring them of Elon's previous claims (i.e robotaxi fleets etc.). This is why we see almost ALL of the Tesla influencers and talking heads on Twitter & Youtube getting the beta and recording very positive videos of it. We even saw one of them (Gali) get shamed by the community when he posted a realistic video showing FSD beta struggling until he eventually deleted it!

I am also quite certain that Tesla can test and develop the software by running it in ghost/shadow mode and comparing the driver's inputs to those that the car would take if it was in control, so rolling out software to extra users doesn't seem like a sign of doing more testing or development. Rather IMO they are rolling out beta to a larger audience in an effort to reassure markets that they are truly making development because "hey look at all the cars that have it!"

Also look at how whenever asked about progress of FSD, Elon simply says "get the beta and try it!" which is a great way to deflect since he KNOWS most people cannot easily get the beta and those that do have it will publish very positive views.

 

[GuyDude]

Where the F is my Beta, Elon!? My new Tesla is Boring as F without beta life.. had it on my old car I traded in. Such a bummer

 

[LowlyOilBurner]

Where the F is my Beta, Elon!? My new Tesla is Boring as F without beta life.. had it on my old car I traded in. Such a bummer

Yep. Same here. Pretty ridiculous.

 

[Dave EV]

Where the F is my Beta, Elon!? My new Tesla is Boring as F without beta life.. had it on my old car I traded in. Such a bummer

Well, if you head to https://www.teslafi.com/firmware.php you can quickly see that there are very few people getting FSD beta builds, those that are probably already had an older version of FSD beta.

Here's to hoping that the start rolling out FSD beta to new cars again.

I still wish that they would reserve some amount of space in the queue for people who have been waiting the longest, instead of creating a random free-for-all every time they decide to open it up to more people.

 

[calikid]

Just go drive 100 miles with AP. I did it with my 2022 on Sunday and got the update later that night, today I did it with the 2018 and got the update about an hour ago.

I’m calling bullshi*. I’ve tried this numerous times on several vehicles.

 

[JimS]

Just go drive 100 miles with AP. I did it with my 2022 on Sunday and got the update later that night, today I did it with the 2018 and got the update about an hour ago.

I’m calling bullshi*. I’ve tried this numerous times on several vehicles.

Did you try it in early June when @Mark II posted it? I believe if you make sure you keep 100 miles of AP driving within the 30 day lookback period there’s a good chance you’ll get it on the next widespread release. (I don’t think 10.13 is widespread yet, at least I haven’t gotten it.) If you don’t normally use AP, just do a a weekly weekend 25 to 34 mile pleasure ride on AP, maybe to a nice ice cream shop in a nearby town!

 

[BioSci]

As a newcomer to the FSDb community (got in early June), I must correct a misstatement made by kbeks13:

[preceding text deleted for brevity]Also look at how whenever asked about progress of FSD, Elon simply says "get the beta and try it!" which is a great way to deflect since he KNOWS most people cannot easily get the beta and those that do have it will publish very positive views[emphasis added].

The 10.10.2 FSDb software appeared in my car with software update 2022.12.3.20. I didn't know it was the FSDb software until I got in the car and read the notes. In particular, nowhere did I agree to publish anything, positive or not. The agreements that Tesla may have had with the early victims beta testers regarding publication clearly don't apply to the thousands of newly added beta drivers.

The other difference in the software that was provided in early June is that it only allows two free strikes; THREE strikes and you're out. So far there have been none, but I wonder why they tightened the belt on inattention.

 

[Tronguy]

As a newcomer to the FSDb community (got in early June), I must correct a misstatement made by kbeks13:

The 10.10.2 FSDb software appeared in my car with software update 2022.12.3.20. I didn't know it was the FSDb software until I got in the car and read the notes. In particular, nowhere did I agree to publish anything, positive or not. The agreements that Tesla may have had with the early victims beta testers regarding publication clearly don't apply to the thousands of newly added beta drivers.

The other difference in the software that was provided in early June is that it only allows two free strikes; THREE strikes and you're out. So far there have been none, but I wonder why they tightened the belt on inattention.

I got hit by a strike, my first (of potentially five) on Monday. The odd thing was, my eyes were certainly out the window and following traffic for this flurry of "you're not being attentive!" alerts, shortly before the Big Warning Message that autosteer was off and all.

Since my eyes were out the window, really, the answer is that the strike must have been something else. Well, over the past month I've been trying to drive with both hands on the wheel, rather than with one hand, kind of leaning down at all times. Both hands fits better with FSD-b, anyway, given the cars occasional propensity to t-bone other cars, jerk the steering wheel madly on turns, or attempt to pull into lanes into which It Should Not Go. Two hands stops those actions a bit faster and results in somewhat fewer gray hairs. And, when thinking about it, I vaguely remembered getting the Blue Screen from time to time where the car was thinking about warning one that you needed torque on the wheel. Never to the point of getting a fault, mind you, because I'd see the blue out of the corner of my eye and torque the wheel to the left or right and clear said blue.

So, for the last couple of days I've been doing two hands, but definitely torquing the wheel, hard, all the time. To the point of occasionally disengaging auto-steer. Result: From one or two "pay attention!" warnings a day, it's now down to zero.

No, it's not safe. Relatively speaking. Because with all that torque on the wheel, it's just possible that the car might try and hit the car in the lane to the right or left when the applied torque makes the car disengage. But it's not that much torque, so I've had time (as in, human reaction time) to straighten up and get back into auto-steer.

Conclusion: The eyetracking software + torque-with-hands-on-the-wheel works as a pair, but the software is buggy. Buggy enough that Tesla put five strikes on the detector for, "not paying attention".

If the newer software is only three strikes, my wild guess is that Tesla thinks they've improved the attention-detecting software enough that five strikes aren't necessary. Better eye tracking? Different algorithms around the torquing movement? Stay tuned.

 

[BioSci]

Tesla's decision to go down to three strikes can't be based on eye tracking - I have a 'legacy' MS without a cabin camera. OTOH, I find that one hand on the steering wheel provides just enough mild torque to tell the car that I'm still there. YMMV.

Edited to add photo of Autopilot screen showing strike status at bottom.

 

[Stefanv1993]

Tesla's decision to go down to three strikes can't be based on eye tracking - I have a 'legacy' MS without a cabin camera. OTOH, I find that one hand on the steering wheel provides just enough mild torque to tell the car that I'm still there. YMMV.

Edited to add photo of Autopilot screen showing strike status at bottom.

View attachment 830968

As far as I heard cars with a cabin camera have and still do get 5 strikes while cars without it (legacy S,X) has always been 3 strikes. I have a legacy S myself and it has been 3 strikes while I know others with the same software having 5 strikes on cars with the cabin camera

 

[dtdtdt]

Remember, the reason that Tesla hands out invites for FSDb it to get the software tested and bugs reported, not so people can have fun with the latest and greatest. (And, given the general jerkiness of driving around with FSDb, it's not exactly, "fun" anyway.)

There is some evidence the new beta testers are helping. The release notes for 10.13 include (emphasis added):

- Improved animal detection recall by 34% and decreased false positives by 8% by doubling the size of the auto-labeled training set.

- Improved the "is parked" attribute for vehicles by 5% by adding 20% more examples to the training set.

- Upgraded the occupancy network to detect dynamic objects and improved performance by adding a video module, tuning the loss function, and adding 37k new clips to the training set.

Maybe all those report button pushes are worth while.

 

[Tronguy]

As far as I heard cars with a cabin camera have and still do get 5 strikes while cars without it (legacy S,X) has always been 3 strikes. I have a legacy S myself and it has been 3 strikes while I know others with the same software having 5 strikes on cars with the cabin camera

Then, I take a wild guess along these lines: Without the camera, three strikes. With the camera, an additional sensor, five strikes. Implication: The camera software for tracking eyes is seriously buggy, because it makes the attention-tracker function worse, not better, requiring more strikes rather than kicking people out for no good reason.

 

[kbecks13]

The agreements that Tesla may have had with the early victims beta testers regarding publication clearly don't apply to the thousands of newly added beta drivers.

Oh to be clear i'm not implying that people signed agreements or were even explicitly told to be positive. I just mean that it seemed like Tesla pushed the beta update to their usual cast of YouTube and Twitter influencers way sooner than everyone else. And naturally those people are very bullish on Tesla and happy with their experience.

But fair point that with all the new drivers it's kinda hard to keep the bad news under wraps like they could previously with a much smaller test fleet.

 

[GuyDude]

So is it 100 miles in one shot? Or just 100 miles total of AP? Because I have about 2,000 miles of AP use on my new M3P and still no ******* beta

 

[sids911]

So is it 100 miles in one shot? Or just 100 miles total of AP? Because I have about 2,000 miles of AP use on my new M3P and still no ******* beta

Total. Their beta releases remain unpredictable though.

 

[Tronguy]

So is it 100 miles in one shot? Or just 100 miles total of AP? Because I have about 2,000 miles of AP use on my new M3P and still no ******* beta

Look: Getting the FSD-b package is just like hitting the door close button on an elevator. There are all these elevators out there that, I swear, that door close button doesn't do anything: But mashing it like mad so the elevator will take off and take one where one wants to go relieves some primal instinct in humans. One thinks the button is doing something.. but one would need a double-blind test to prove it and lots of statistics.

It's nearly as bad when one wants just a regular software update for one's Tesla. By now, most people got the drill: It doesn't depend upon wishes, it's just when Tesla Does It, and one's position in the queue is pretty much random. People who get torqued over it sometimes actually call the Service Centers and plead; I suspect that if it's a slow day and the customer doesn't piss off the service guy too much, these people get their new release. But if the SC person is smart, they won't do it: Do it once, and the customer will attempt to make it a regular thing. Worse than toddlers, I swear. And related.

So, a bunch of people do $RANDOM things and some of them get the Beta. They then tell their next best buddies on TMC what they did. Drive 100 miles on AP? Sacrifice a chicken? Bow to the Gods of Chance? The ones who succeed say, "I succeeded!" and may be convinced that That Was What Did It. The ones who failed don't talk much (maybe) and we don't hear from them so much. Humans are Very Good at pattern matching. They're also very good at wishful thinking. Witness: Casinos. Yeah, everybody knows that, in the end, the house wins. So, why do people go there? Fundamentally, people don't really get statistics.

So, I happen to have FSD-b. But:

1. Last fall, put in the request on the car.
2. First week or two, the score was in the 80's or lower on a day-by-day.
3. Over the next month, started driving like a maniac 90-year-old Grandmother.
4. Found out about resetting about 1.5 months after starting, did that.
5. Slowly crept up from the low 90's to, like, 95 or 97. Was really, really trying for a 98 score. Got it; then, the next day, all those blame alerts from people cutting in front of me. Down to 96.
6. Discovered that in normal FSD mode, no matter how weird the behavior, one wouldn't get dinged. Driving got more dangerous and scary because, well, FSD is like letting a teenager drive the car, especially in heavy merge traffic. Started gathering while knuckles and hairs.
7. Got nearly to 98 again - and another bunch of NJ crazies drove it down again. Not to mention the detector going off on cars 100 yards away turning right.
8. Lost my temper. Disabled FSD, including the request, completely. DROVE the car like it was meant to be driven, much safer. After a couple of days of this (mid February?) my adrenaline levels dropped, I was more relaxed. Turned on regular FSD. Started using it for cruise control again, but Off It Went in all those congested merge situations.
9. There was an earnings call. Musk was there. He didn't precisely beg, but he asked people to get into the FSD program. I thought about it for a while. OK, I've paid for the full-bore FSD, I'd like it, but Tesla needs the help to get there. All right: Turned on the request, but swore that I would drive normally, wouldn't look at the Safety Score (much), but would drive the car in a safe manner, heck with what the safety score thought. Accelerating hard on a turn when moving up with traffic? Sure. Pay no attention to all those Forward Collision Warnings when doing this three-lane-keep-on-shifting-to-the-left merge? You betcha. Cruise control when convenient.. sure.
10. Blood pressure went down. Some days (I'd check, like once a week or so) the score would be in the 80's. Most of the time in the mid 90's. Once in super-long while, 100. Average around 93.
11. They delivered FSD-b six weeks ago.

So, where was the 100 miles on FSD? OK: Over this time, I had been back and forth to Boston a few times, naturally using FSD, fakey FCW's and all. But, given the "resets", I don't think I had that on the official history when FSD-b appeared.

I was driving, well, normally, purposely avoiding granny-mode driving. Was that it? Who knows.

I live in a congested state: Ask anybody. Was that why, Tesla wanted input from that kind of place? Who knows.

Does Tesla own the equivalent of a dartboard, and they pick $RANDOM people? Who knows.

They have all that data from the Safety Score. They running some funky analysis that eliminates some people, adds others, or does some analysis on the driving by random dartboard recipients? Who knows.

Nobody knows. Tesla doesn't talk. Yeah, Safety score. See above. And nobody says that Tesla's criteria, over time, has to stay static, either.

As far as I can guess (and, natch, it's only a guess) Tesla happens to be collecting data for the improvement of FSD-b to the point where they can install it on every FSD-owners' cars. So, they want good data. So, they get that data from drivers. What's the criteria for a driver that gives Tesla good data? No clue, beyond Safety Score (see above), but, given my low score, they're probably looking for more than that. What are they looking for? No idea. And Tesla doesn't talk.

 

[drtimhill]

Look: Getting the FSD-b package is just like hitting the door close button on an elevator. There are all these elevators out there that, I swear, that door close button doesn't do anything: But mashing it like mad so the elevator will take off and take one where one wants to go relieves some primal instinct in humans. One thinks the button is doing something.. but one would need a double-blind test to prove it and lots of statistics.

It really doesnt do anything, except when the elevator is in certain special modes which you typically never see. But it’s amusing to watch people push it.

 

[GuyDude]

I’ve had beta for almost a year before trading my car in for a new Performance. If I knew it would take months to get beta again I may not have traded the dam car in! I drive 25k miles year for work up and down the coast between our facilities. Many of those miles are FSD back country roads that beta handled incredibly for me. Now I’m stuck driving those miles my self…. Sooo tedious I may have to hire a driver for a bit. What a pain in the a

 

[kbecks13]

I’ve had beta for almost a year before trading my car in for a new Performance. If I knew it would take months to get beta again I may not have traded the dam car in! I drive 25k miles year for work up and down the coast between our facilities. Many of those miles are FSD back country roads that beta handled incredibly for me. Now I’m stuck driving those miles my self…. Sooo tedious I may have to hire a driver for a bit. What a pain in the a

Why cant you just use regular autopilot? Is FSD really that much better on non-highway roads? Also as someone waiting for 4 years be thankful that you got to experience it at all in your old car