Now, to change the topic slightly from, "Every FSD-B Is Going To Fail Miserably And The World Is Coming To An End And Tesla Will Fail!", I have a not-so-brief trip report.
2023 M3 LR AWD, running 2023.44.30.7, FSD 11.4.9. Trip: Run up to Brighton, MA from New Jersey Thursday morning, coming on back Friday night. I got lucky, I guess: The car, which had been running 2023.44.30.5.1 got a push update to 30.7 Wednesday night, just before the SO and I decided to go.
Summary: Really, really good FSD-b on the highways; not bad on the twisty-curvy colonial tracks that Boston likes to claim are roads.
First issue: Getting on the NJ Turnpike at the I-287 exit. FSD will actually go through toll booths these days, although it does slow to a much-less-than-human crawl when it does so. After the booths (some 15 or so booths wide) the road does a major split, then splits again on each side, with the final splits being for the Auto Only lanes vs. Trucks and Auto lanes. The car got over too far to the right, heading for the truck lanes, and I had to intervene to get it back where NAV and I thought it should have been.
But, before and after that - no problems. The car navigated the NJT, taking the proper split past the Lincoln Tunnel exit, then continued onto the I-80 merger, up the interstate, across the George Washington bridge. No issues with "zipper"-style merging (and there's lots of these on this route), getting into the appropriate lanes well ahead of time. I've been bombing up and down the East Coast since my '70's Navy Days, so this is a route I know, shall we say, pretty well: I didn't intervene at all. The car took the appropriate exit on the Major Deegan (I-87), got off at the Cross-Country expressway exit (which involves exiting onto local roads, moving two lanes to the right, onto the ramp for for the Cross-Country), then, after a mile or so, the double-left exit onto the Hutchinson River Parkway. I'm a-telling you: This trip through NYC's major interstate alphabet soup of limited access highways inhabited by crazed New Yorkers scares people I know, badly, but the car took it without a single intervention. I did have it switch lanes occasionally with the turn stalk - but, mainly, the car got out of the left lane (or into one) on its own.
New-to-me feature: Say one is flying along at 65 on all these roads and, thank-you-the-dept.-of-refubishing-roads, up pops a 45 mph speed limit sign. At one time with FSD, especially after all this NHTSA stuff with Slowing Down Immediately! in the cards, the car would try to slow down. In traffic, with nobody else doing that thing. That didn't happen this trip: When a sudden slow-down situation popped up, the car would put up a message, "Keeping up with traffic conditions" (or something) and... the car kept up with the other traffic. The settable speed limit number on the screen, in these conditions, would turn Blue, at a limit higher than the posted, but roughly equivalent to the speed everybody else was doing. A very welcome feature.
Speaking of sudden slow downs... No phantom braking. Period. In roughly 500 miles of driving on interstates. Yes, the car would slow down for speed limit changes (outside of that keeping-up stuff), which sort-of feels like a phantom braking event.. except, in every slow-down case, it wasn't. It was the speed limit changing.
So long as we're in the beat-the-dead-horse area, I can report that I had Zero problems with the windshield wipers. No dry wipes. Appropriate wipes with the light mist we got a couple of times and the frost a couple of other times. (Was down to 22F; nothing for Boston in general, that, but chillier than us pansy New Jerseyians are used to.)
Going on about another recent beat-the-dead-horse thread: I tend to drive 5 mph higher than the limit, so, with the major roads at 65, I was pulling 70 most of the time on the interstates. On the energy screen usage tab, we were beating the Tesla rough estimate; as we'd get closer to a destination, in general, the predicted percent of charge that we'd have when we got there kept on creeping up from, say, 10% to 13% over 150 miles. Both going up there and back. In 30F to 40F weather. That heat pump really works well.
Very, very little in the way of nags. I made a point of driving with both hands, balanced, and, no, I don't tend to wear sunglasses unless it's really bright out there. Once in a while a little blue flash (we're talking, maybe, once every 50 to 75 miles, if not more) and a little torquing lightly back and forth chased the nag away forthwith. The SO reported no isses when she was driving, either.
While liking FSD-b on highways quite a bit, I'm not quite suicidal enough to let it have free reign in some of the tighter, heavily trafficked parts of Downtown Boston and Brighton. Side roads in Brighton claim to be two-way streets, but when people park on both sides, there's but one lane down the middle. Cars passing each other stop a hundred yards back, then dodge in and out of empty parking spots in order to pass each other. This requires eye contact and a fine eye for detecting the gaps.. no, I wasn't going to let FSD-b handle that. On normal major 2-lane and 4-lane roads, I let FSD-b play, including that insane three-to-five lane Washington Avenue half-mile long roundabout in Newton Corner that runs around both sides of the Mass Pike, and it did fine.
The trip back to New Jersey was, if anything, better than the trip up to Boston. Out I-90 to I-84; from there to I-91, then down the Merritt, with a stop in Meridian at Wayback Burgers for eats, a charge, and a driver swap. (Their burgers are better than the Wendy's next door, anyway.)
The tour de force was getting back across the Hudson. For those who don't know, the George Washington Bridge was built long before all those namby-pamby national safety standards were put together and the approaches to the bridge, likewise. NAV wanted the car to go south on the Major Deegan, so I gave it its head and went for it. Traffic was (relatively) light on Friday, possibly due to the oncoming north-easter coming up the coast, so instead of being grinding stop-and-go (normal) it was all moving right along at 60-65 mph, which is impossibly fast for NYC. FSD got into the correct exit lanes; then kept on moving, likely before I would have, getting into the appropriate left or right lane for each of the subsequent ramps, leading up to the insane 270-degree turn onto the elevated eight-lane, full of trucks and maniacs Cross-Bronx expressway which, unusually, was running at speed. The car merged onto the Cross-Bronx with nary a hesitation, got onto the correct lanes for the lower level (cars only, don't-cha-know) and, at speed, with the usual collection of flashing yellow lights, took the sharp turns onto the six-lanes-thataway bridge across to New Jersey.
There are humans who mess up that collection of roads, often with 40,000 lbs of tractor trailer semis involved. (In fact, at the time, the upper level of the GWB was partly blocked with a disabled semi). FSD-b did it without turning a hair. And kept up with traffic, switching lanes back and forth as a normal human would do.
I mentioned that the GWB was built before safety standards and, possible, Rules About Signage were fully developed. FSD-b, as an encore, hit the spaghetti on the offramps of the GWB and got into the correct local car lanes on I-80 westbound; then got onto I-95 (NJ Turnpike) southbound; then hit the correct exit to take the (bit faster) eastern branch of the NJT on the way back south.
Honestly, this was the very best trip I'd ever experienced with FSD-b. Smooth driving, going around slower drives, getting back into the center, non-passing lanes either when past the slower car or somebody coming up from the rear. When semi-tailgating from faster drivers occurred, the car would move to the left into a gap with a slower car in it, slow down, let the speedy type pass, and, with other cars coming up (but not too close) would shift back into the left lane, pass the slow guy, lather, rinse, repeat.
On the final pass into home, the car took a slightly longer route to home base. The SO and I were looking at each other, going, "Why this?" and then we passed a DMV sign: "Accident ahead two miles". Cool, that's the way this stuff is supposed to work.
I dunno. There's a lot of posters on this thread who complain bitterly about how poorly FSD-b works in the LA Basin. Maybe it's a secret superpower: Tesla develops the software in CA, but optimizes it for the East Coast.
I'm really impressed with 11.4.9. If 12.X is better than this, wowzers.
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