Future of FSD after "traffic light & stop sign response" release

[Knightshade]

I can't possibly see them progressing on City NOA before they figure out how to keep the car in the appropriate lane of travel first.

Well, sounds like they've already given up on City NOA anyway and you'll just be getting "city autosteer" (which yeah, will still need to figure out how to get straight through an intersection without lines through through it)

 

[turnem]

Well, sounds like they've already given up on City NOA anyway and you'll just be getting "city autosteer" (which yeah, will still need to figure out how to get straight through an intersection without lines through through it)

I have to say that I feel like City NOA is pretty unlikely with the current hardware setup. I'd be OK with that if they can get Stop Sign and Stop Light recognition full automated along with keeping the car in the appropriate lane of travel.

I still have hope for those items but I'll be shocked if we get anything close to City NOA in the next 5 years.

 

[powertoold]

This is me being an optimist, but perhaps Tesla is confident of their FSD and rather than selling it as a one time cost, they've decided that city NoA is subscription only? I dunno, this "city autosteer" wording is very odd. We can already enable "autosteer" in the city.

 

[diplomat33]

I dunno, this "city autosteer" wording is very odd. We can already enable "autosteer" in the city.

Yes, but right now, autosteer is just lane keeping on city streets. I think we can assume that Tesla is implying that autosteer will do something new on city streets since it is listed as a new feature. Presumably, it is a reference to autosteer making right and left turns as we already discussed. It is also possible that it is a reference to better autosteer behavior on city streets like maneuvering around construction areas, avoiding potholes or making auto lane changes. For example, there is an area where I live where the right lane on the city street is partially blocked by construction and I need to switch lanes. I would hope that in a future update, autosteer could do that automatically.

 

[powertoold]

Let's be real though, if Tesla achieves level 4 or 5, there'll be no financial reason for them to sell us cars.

 

[Mardak]

Looking at the manual: "Autosteer builds upon Traffic-Aware Cruise Control, intelligently keeping Model 3 in its driving lane when cruising at a set speed."

The current Autosteer doesn't work very well at "keeping in its driving lane" on city streets in various situations:
1) going straight across large intersections / getting confused about where to continue
2) making a turn when in a dedicated turn lane
3) curving through sharper bends
4) following unmarked lanes (common in residential areas)

If we want to be quite pessimistic about the listing of features, "Navigate on Autopilot for city streets" isn't mentioned where that functionality would allow AutoPilot to decide when to "change driving lane," e.g., to make a turn from a "straight" lane. Similarly "Auto Lane Change for city streets" isn't listed, so we shouldn't be expecting that either? And nothing explicitly listed about yielding and detecting when it's safe to enter an intersection or maneuvering around lane intrusions, e.g., parked cars with doors open.

Then again, maybe Tesla doesn't need to explicitly list features that are covered by general AutoPilot improvements, e.g., highway AutoPilot should also maneuver around parked emergency vehicles.

 

[diplomat33]

I do wonder about "City NOA". I always assumed that Tesla would need to enable NOA on city streets in order to implement "following nav route" and also to create a seamless experience from highway to city streets. Right now, we use NOA on highways but it downgrades to AP when we exit an off ramp. If NOA was enabled on both highways and city streets, then we could continue on NOA straight through from highway to city streets and back on highways. That would seem to be the goal, right?

So I am thinking Tesla is still planning to do "City NOA" and it is implied in "autosteer on city streets" or they will enable "City NOA" separately?

 

[Cmos2000]

Since Tesla tends to historically way overpromise on the self driving front I would assume that we are not getting NOA on city streets. If we were they would be hyping the feature as coming soon or this year or something like that and not downplaying it.

 

[Cheburashka]

Wow the new FSD sucks.

This doesn't sound to me like anything a reasonable human would consider "full self driving".

 

[willow_hiller]

"prices are likely to increase over time with new feature releases"

So the list of features is not all inclusive. The listed features are just what's available now/what's coming this year.

 

[Cheburashka]

Why did they remove automatic driving on city streets if it's still "coming later this year"?

 

[willow_hiller]

Why did they remove automatic driving on city streets if it's still "coming later this year"?

As I said, the list is just what's available now and what is coming later this year. Maybe Tesla thinks they can no longer achieve "automatic driving on city streets" this year in the vague sense, and replaced it with "autosteer on city streets" which is more concrete and probably achievable this year.

 

[Knightshade]

"prices are likely to increase over time with new feature releases"

So the list of features is not all inclusive. The listed features are just what's available now/what's coming this year.

The list is inclusive of what they "promise" to deliver for that price.

(though they've altered the definition and price of FSD several times now, reducing the list of promised features every time while the price keeps going up)

Old (much more complete) FSD was killed off Feb/March 2019- replaced by the "very specific list of features" version for 6k.

Which went up to 7k when they turned one of those listed features on (enhanced summon)

And is going up to 8k July 1 (per Elons earlier tweet) and has now been reduced AGAIN with the "automatic city driving" becoming "autosteer" in the city.

Most speculated the 8k bump was in response to releasing just the stoplight stuff... so presumably they'd increase it AGAIN when autosteer in the city comes out.

 

[Knightshade]

Why did they remove automatic driving on city streets if it's still "coming later this year"?

I think you answered your own question

 

[diplomat33]

Why did they remove automatic driving on city streets if it's still "coming later this year"?

I guess there are 2 possibilities:
1) They didn't. They just renamed it to "autosteer on city streets" because they thought it was less vague, and it's the same feature set as before.
2) They did remove it and replace it with "autosteer on city streets", presumably because "autosteer on city street" is a more apt description of what we are getting later this year.

I think we will have to wait and see what features we actually get before we can judge which it is.

 

[willow_hiller]

The list is inclusive of what they "promise" to deliver for that price.

(though they've altered the definition and price of FSD several times now, reducing the list of promised features every time while the price keeps going up)

Old (much more complete) FSD was killed off Feb/March 2019- replaced by the "very specific list of features" version for 6k.

Which went up to 7k when they turned one of those listed features on (enhanced summon)

And is going up to 8k July 1 (per Elons earlier tweet)

Most speculated that was in response to releasing just the stoplight stuff... so presumably they'd increase it AGAIN when autosteer in the city comes out.

I would agree that the list is what they promise to deliver in writing, but the last paragraph really does leave the door open for the evolution of this current feature-set into more autonomy:

Emphasis mine:

"The currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous. The activation and use of these features are dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions. As these self-driving features evolve, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates."

Why would they talk about the activation of the features that are already active, unless they're talking about the future utility of them? And could the vehicle drive from your home to your work without interventions with the listed features above alone? Definitely not. But could it be done incrementally with upgrades to the functionality of those features? Maybe.

 

[Knightshade]

I would agree that the list is what they promise to deliver in writing, but the last paragraph really does leave the door open for the evolution of this current feature-set into more autonomy:

Emphasis mine:

"The currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous

Right. All CURRENT features are L2 only.

. The activation and use of these features are dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions. As these self-driving features evolve, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates."

Why would they talk about the activation of the features that are already active,

They're saying they don't release things unless they think they're better than humans AND allowed by regulators. (and keep in mind 2 of the features were NOT activated at all up till a week ago, and 1 still isn't and has already been walked back)

See also some other countries including canada and europe where some FSD features are not enabled like they are in the US due to regulations- and it's unclear when they ever will be.

And could the vehicle drive from your home to your work without interventions with the listed features above alone? Definitely not. But could it be done incrementally with upgrades to the functionality of those features? Maybe.

They stopped promising that when they nerfed the FSD description the first time in March 2019.

 

[john5520]

I guess there are 2 possibilities:
1) They didn't. They just renamed it to "autosteer on city streets" because they thought it was less vague, and it's the same feature set as before.
2) They did remove it and replace it with "autosteer on city streets", presumably because "autosteer on city street" is a more apt description of what we are getting later this year.

I think we will have to wait and see what features we actually get before we can judge which it is.

I wish I could have said it better. The nay-sayers are so quick to sign FSD's death warrant.

 

[willow_hiller]

I wish I could have said it better. The nay-sayers are so quick to sign FSD's death warrant.

We know that internally, at least as of the January 2020 earnings call, Tesla's Minimum Viable Product for FSD was autonomy that could travel from your home to your work without disengagements some of the time. That may have changed in the last 3 months, but I don't think Elon would give up on that goal that quickly.

 

[diplomat33]

We know that internally, at least as of the January 2020 earnings call, Tesla's Minimum Viable Product for FSD was autonomy that could travel from your home to your work without disengagements some of the time. That may have changed in the last 3 months, but I don't think Elon would give up on that goal that quickly.

I think that is still the goal.

In fact, the answer may have been under our noses the whole time:

I think that the FSD demo is what we can expect the MVP to be.

So ask yourself: what part of this FSD demo, does Tesla still need to deliver to the customer? Which is why I think "autosteer on city streets" refers to auto lane changes and making turns at intersections to follow a route. And yes, I still think, based on the demo, that we will get "City NOA". That is the last big, obvious, piece of "feature complete" needed to achieve that stated MVP. But it might come in stages. "autosteer on city streets" may be part 1 and "city NOA" might be part 2.

And we should remember that MVP is the minimum. It will probably not be able to handle downtown NYC in rush hour traffic without many disengagements:

I hope Tesla does not stop at MVP but continues to work to try to solve more complex driving cases like what we see in the NYC video.

There is the possibility though that the current hardware is not good enough for more complex FSD in which case, Tesla may declare FSD "good enough" once they achieve "feature complete" with no disengagements. It is also possible that, just like with the introduction of AP2, that Tesla at some point introduces another big sensor upgrade with more cameras or more radars etc... to give us FSD 2.0.