Um. I entered a post into this thread earlier because, lo and behold, I managed to get FSD Beta on my lowly 2018 M3 LR RWD, with a score of a mere 93, even.
Now having driven the 10.12 variant around for a while: Be careful what you wish for.
This is a report from the war zone.
Look, I'm into the Beta (and, believe you me, it
is a Beta) because I have grandiose hopes of helping Tesla get over the hump of making FSD better to the point where mere mortals can use it without acquiring a shock of white hairs. Anybody thinking that they can kick this thing into gear and relax on local street driving, kind of the way one can relax on limited access highways with non-Beta FSD, had better think again.
Yes, on a good day (a
really good day, the birds are singing, the daffodils are blooming, etc.) the car might take one door to door ten miles across the local roads.
That has not yet happened to me once in three weeks of daily commutes and driving around.
By this time I'm getting a better handle on its failings and possible reasons why. Which helps a bit: If one knows that a situation is about to arise that puts the car into a death-defying motion that will result in bent metal and/or irritated other drivers on the road, then one can disengage the car early, before other people start screaming. Or giving one the stink-eye. In no particular order:
- Say one is on a two lane road and is approaching an intersection where it's one lane to the left, a lane or two straight, and maybe a lane on the right that can turn right. If the car can see all the painted markings on the road while driving up on this, fine. If it can't, it'll pick a lane for straight ahead/turn left/turn right pretty much at random and get it Wrong most of the time. Leaving one stuck in a left turn lane when one wants to go straight, in a center go straight lane when the nav wants one to go left, and so on. And this is despite the likely existence of Signs ahead of the intersection noting which lanes go where: The FSDb may be able to read speed limit signs, but sure and begorrah it can't see those black-on-white directional information signs that New Jersey plants ahead of intersections like that. What this means: Unless there's something that guides the car into the correct lane (double yellow lines that block off the left turn lane until one is right on top of one, for example), one may as well disengage before the intersection, or at the first fast surge into the wrong lane. So much for driving across town. Unless it's the dead of night or something, there's no other cars out there, and the car can see the turn markings painted on the road before one gets into the intersection.
- Say one is in the correct lane for straight ahead, behind several cars and is stopped. Say that the lane on the left, which is left turn only, happens to be open and free of cars. More than half the time the FSDb will think that this is a fine and dandy way to get ahead and will cut into the left lane from a dead stop so it can get ahead - and will get stuck in the left turn lane when it wants to go straight. Ugh.
- Left turns from a two lane road that's wideish to a side street. The car will be going down the center of the right lane, then it purposely drifts right, blocking traffic, before coming to a complete halt, even if there's no oncoming traffic, with the car at about a 15 to 20 degree angle to the left. Before it thinks about drifting slowly forward. Any cars behind one during this dance will be honking, loudly. I mean: We all learn in Driver's Ed that when one is turning left and has to wait, one hugs the center line to let traffic pass on the right while one waits for a chance to go across.
- Speaking of which: At an intersection, one nominal lane straight ahead and also for left turns. Some nice, decent driver is in the middle of the intersection in front of one and has their left turn blinker on. There's tons of room to go around the car. Nope, the Tesla comes to a halt and waits for the car in front of one to move, but does so in a way that blocks traffic behind one. Ugh.
- And if drifting around in the wrong direction is bad, the following should be a crime: On unstriped two-way roads going over hills, the car will drive right down the center of the road when approaching the crown of a hill. Dangerous as all get-out and heart pounding.
- If one likes smooth driving.. FSDb is probably not for you. Most of the time it's relatively smooth, but not nearly as smooth as a human. And on certain intersections, for no discernible reason, it jerks the steering wheel hard through 5 to 20 degrees, sometimes back and forth. If one tries to hang onto the steering wheel, any friction at all in this kind of event results in a disengagement. One has to be prepared for the jerk (having been at the intersection before) and more-or-less let go of the wheel so the car can do its insane thing. Do Not Let This Happen When One Has Passengers, it scares the beejezesus out of them.
Thing is, FSDb isn't all bad. It sees pedestrians, other cars on the right, cars on the left, and often takes the appropriate action, smoothly (but not always smoothly) most of the time. If there's stripes of whatever flavor on the road, that seriously helps. It accelerates smoothly from red lights. It
can go through stop signs, although see the note about jerking the wheel. (It's not really happy about stop signs - it'll creep halfway through an intersection sometimes before gassing it the rest of the way; other times, it's OK, with no discernible rhyme or reason as to which result one gets.)
As a result of all the above, I end up hitting the little "recorder" button that FSDb puts on the dash anywhere between five and twenty times on a single commute. Maybe those who live in less congested areas than NJ or who drive when there's less traffic out there might get less excitement.
At the moment the limited-access highway driving of FSDb is a near clone of regular FSD. Although I've heard rumors that that will be changing in the near future.
But, I'm a telling you all: You don't get FSDb because you get easier driving. You get it because you want to
test the software and tell Tesla when it isn't working so good. And it's not bad 100% of the time; it's the 5% (or whatever) where it's making attempts to kill one that leads to the excitement, especially when the events happen pretty much at random.
The good news: One can always revert to non-FSD anything when one actually needs to get around town. Or turn off FSDb when trying to take, say, a long drive without trying to kill someone.
You have been warned.