First real V12.3 test drive for me. Late at night, very light traffic. Auto speed offset NOT enabled. +7% speed offset selected.
OK, mind blown. Before everyone gets their panties in a wad, no it's not perfect and it has a ways to go to be L3. There are negatives which I'll go over. Why is my mind blown? because I saw it make decisions. Not following code, but making decisions. Let me explain. There's a couple of parking lots on my test route. There are gates and there is innacurate map data--both routing and speed.
The first parking lot looks like a road when you first pull in--but it's not. You turn in off a 25 mph road and there's no new speed sign to let you know that the speed limit is now 15. You have to recognize it's a parking lot even though it looks like a road. It takes humans a bit to figure that out their first time there. On top of that, the nav data still shows it is a road with a 25 mph speed limit. V11.x ALWAYS accelerated to 25 until I intervened. Tonight, V12.3 started accelerating to 25 mph, and right where human drivers generally recognize they're in a parking lot the car slowed to 12. The speed limit and max speed still showed 25. I raised my eyebrows at this--very, very nice.
Same parking lot, second decision. I stopped the car and selected a new destination. As always, the navigation selected a route that goes around the edge of the parking lot. The car started to follow that route, but I swear it noticed a short cut. Since it was night there were no cars parked. Any human would cut across the parking spots to avoid circling the parking lot. And that's just what the car did. It paused for a moment and then ignored the navigation data; it proceeded slowly across the parking spots and re-intercepted the route. And yes, it still drove at 12 mph in the parking lot even though the nav data was telling it to go 25 mph. Outstanding!
Third decision. It drove flawlessly to my next destination, a high school parking lot where it was to go to the front door. The only problem is the navigation shows an incorrect route once in the parking lot. There's a curb in the way. The car paused for a moment at the curb and then ignored the navigation route to drive across the parking lot picking up another way to the front door. The navigation never calculated this route, the car just figured out on it's own how to get to the front door. Mind now fully blown. Oh, and it recognized it was a parking lot and slowed to 12 mph again--and the nav data still showed a 25 mph speed limit.
Other notes:
Auto high beams--outstanding. This is the first time I've given them better than fair to good. Not only did they dim when other headlights were visible, they dimmed when you could see light starting to come around a corner--even if it was just vaguely visible. Exactly what I would do.
Speed control: needs work, but is still impressive. Yes it's often too slow, but the car is making decisions on how fast to go. Too conservative for the most part, but I liked that it slowed down in neighborhoods even though the max speed showed 27 with the offset. A bit too slow at times, but better than too fast--and utterly amazing to me that it recognizes that 27 is too fast in a neighborhood. IMHO, 20 mph is the proper speed in a neighborhood where a child or a pet might run out in front of you from behind a car. That said, my one intervention tonight was when it failed to slow at one point where the speed limit drops from 35 to 25. It's not a neighborhood, and there are no visual cues that you need to slow down other than the speed limit sign. In this case the max speed displayed did drop to 27 with a speed limit of 25, but it kept tooling along at 35. It wasn't dangerous, but it could easily get you a ticket at this location.
The car waits too long at stop signs, but once it finally decides to go it accelerates briskly. This is likely the fault of the NHTSA. Screw them.
If you don't touch the wheel, the nags come far more often, but it seems like you need less torque on the wheel to avoid the nags.
There are multiple difficult intersections and round-abouts on my route. For the first time the car handled all of these--with one possible exception--flawlessly. Not only that, it handled them smoothly and confidently. The one possible exception is a blind corner that you must yield to opposite traffic that isn't even visible. There's a yield sign, but really there should be a stop sign. V11.x would blast right through this intersection--dangerous without a spotter to let you know it's clear. V12.3 slowed down considerably. Did it slow enough? That's a good question. It was slow enough for me because if a car had been coming I would have seen the light from it's headlights. Was V12.3 thinking the same thing???? If not, it went through the intersection too fast. Had it been daylight I would have intervened. If it was noticing no light from headlights, then all I can say is "Holy *sugar*!" I'll have to try it again in the light. Turn lane behavior was much improved over V11.x. V11 would half heartedly pull in to a turn lane, often leaving the tail of the car sticking out. V12.3 pulled right in to the lane exactly as it should.
The car gets a little closer than I like to some curbs.
It sure feels like it's 12.3--and not 11.x--on the freeway. I don't know obviously, and I know there's some debate on the issue.
Objectively, V12.3 looks like a nice upgrade over V11.x. Subjectively I'd call it a huge improvement. Why? Because it's making decisions--good ones. I taught new jet pilots in the USAF for a few years. Some officers had great "hands"--they could learn to fly maneuvers with skill. Some had "airmanship"--judgement. They could think three dimensionally and make good decisions. If a kid could make good decisions I knew they'd be OK. They'd be at least a good pilot. If they had great hands AND great airmanship then I knew they'd be a hot stick by graduation. For the first time ever, FSD is making decisions. That is bloody F*&^ing amazing!!! Tesla might just get there yet. Certainly L3 in good weather is going to be technically possible in the not too distant future. Maybe not in two weeks though, LOL!
.
