Interview study with participants of FSD Beta

[SNordhoff]

Dear all,

I am a post-doctoral researcher at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and currently conduct an interview study with participants of FSD Beta. The main objective of the interview study is to understand how FSD Beta is being used as well as to explore general attitudes towards the system.
This research is non-academic research being conducted in the context of my post-doc.

Send me a DM when you are willing to participate in the study or reply to this post.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks and kind regards,

Sina Nordhoff, [email protected]

 

[Krash]

Sina, I’m the moderator of this forum and just approved your post above. Good luck with your studies. TMC members aren’t exactly a random sample of either the beta participants , Tesla drivers or even the general population, but I hope you’ll share your findings.

 

[SNordhoff]

Hi, thanks a lot! Yes, I will share my findings for sure. I already performed 84 in-depth interviews with amazing people and I will be very happy to share the results with the community!
Thanks, Sina

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

I'm an FSD Beta participant.

I'll send you an email.

General attitude:

• It was released prematurely and still isn't worthy of our time or the additional risk.
• It's not a beta at all, but more like a developer preview or essentially a Marketing Stunt
• The worst part of the beta is the lack of customer engagement. This means issues don't get reported because people don't have any encouragement.
• I don't believe it will ever have a general release with HW3 unless the capabilities are highly limited.
• It doesn't appropriately handle things like 4 way stops so it begs the question of how much of this is fake ware.
• I feel like its uncompetitive as it's a paid feature that prevents a customer from getting another product because of a feeling that maybe some day it will accomplish something worthy of that money. It's like holding onto a stock that lost money, and you're just trying to decide when to cut your losses
• I rarely use it because it screws up so much. Like it can't even go through some corners on my commute without it turning on the turn signals like some idiot
• It's too terrible in its current form to be dangerous. About the only accidents I expect to see from the community are small things like curb rashes and door dings.
• When you're part of the FSD beta program you lose out on bug fixes, and more stable versions of the mainline releases. So things like the trip planner will show ridiculous behavior because it's broken.
• The only reason I don't bail out of the FSD program is how hard it was to get in, and how hard it will be to get back in
• To minimize false braking I usually have FSD turned off in the settings. I only enable it if I'm actually going to use FSD beta on a drive.
• Only one FSD beta tester is worth following and that's Chuck. All the rest aren't meticulous enough, and unworthy of bothering with. You should seek out chuck on twitter to get his involvement in your study.
• When I bought FSD I did so knowing full well it would never accomplish autonomous driving. I didn't think it would suck as bad as it does or that the FSD Beta would even be a thing. I mostly bought it because of the low price ($3K on top of the $5K for EAP which I bought for other reasons).
• I'm only giving FSD Beta until my Rivian arrives. If FSD Beta fails to do anything interesting I'll sell the car. I don't need two EV's.

Much of this comes down to my nature as a person. I referred to the FSD release in 2016 as one of three things that signaled that our reality had broken. That here we had a car maker selling the impossible. I referred to it as the unnecessary lie. It still remains as a falsehood in 2022.

 

[sperkin]

I'm an FSD Beta participant as well.

Since getting into Beta, I have been following Tesla less and less. I'm actually shopping for an ICE car now. Looking at Porsche 911s.

FSD is a huge disappointment, and what Elon said in 2016 about FSD is what got me excited about Tesla. I am keeping both my Model 3s as they are now the kids' cars. I'm moving on as I find myself way better driver than FSD will ever become. Robots will be robots so FSD will always feel robotic and ridget. Driving is very fluid and dynamic which I don't think FSD will ever get there. You need to bend the laws and people do it all the time.

For example on a S curve, cars beside you will cut the corners. FSD needs to give them some room and move over as well by riding the line. FSD doesn't do that but instead freaks out and slams the brakes. Many example, all you have to do is go to a school while parents are picking up their kids or dropping them off. FSD doesn't know what to do when cars are all breaking basic road rules.

 

[SNordhoff]

I'm an FSD Beta participant.

I'll send you an email.

General attitude:

• It was released prematurely and still isn't worthy of our time or the additional risk.
• It's not a beta at all, but more like a developer preview or essentially a Marketing Stunt
• The worst part of the beta is the lack of customer engagement. This means issues don't get reported because people don't have any encouragement.
• I don't believe it will ever have a general release with HW3 unless the capabilities are highly limited.
• It doesn't appropriately handle things like 4 way stops so it begs the question of how much of this is fake ware.
• I feel like its uncompetitive as it's a paid feature that prevents a customer from getting another product because of a feeling that maybe some day it will accomplish something worthy of that money. It's like holding onto a stock that lost money, and you're just trying to decide when to cut your losses
• I rarely use it because it screws up so much. Like it can't even go through some corners on my commute without it turning on the turn signals like some idiot
• It's too terrible in its current form to be dangerous. About the only accidents I expect to see from the community are small things like curb rashes and door dings.
• When you're part of the FSD beta program you lose out on bug fixes, and more stable versions of the mainline releases. So things like the trip planner will show ridiculous behavior because it's broken.
• The only reason I don't bail out of the FSD program is how hard it was to get in, and how hard it will be to get back in
• To minimize false braking I usually have FSD turned off in the settings. I only enable it if I'm actually going to use FSD beta on a drive.
• Only one FSD beta tester is worth following and that's Chuck. All the rest aren't meticulous enough, and unworthy of bothering with. You should seek out chuck on twitter to get his involvement in your study.
• When I bought FSD I did so knowing full well it would never accomplish autonomous driving. I didn't think it would suck as bad as it does or that the FSD Beta would even be a thing. I mostly bought it because of the low price ($3K on top of the $5K for EAP which I bought for other reasons).
• I'm only giving FSD Beta until my Rivian arrives. If FSD Beta fails to do anything interesting I'll sell the car. I don't need two EV's.

Much of this comes down to my nature as a person. I referred to the FSD release in 2016 as one of three things that signaled that our reality had broken. That here we had a car maker selling the impossible. I referred to it as the unnecessary lie. It still remains as a falsehood in 2022.

Hi, many thanks for the great response! Did you already send me an email?
I have not received anything so far I guess. Let me know. [email protected]

 

[SNordhoff]

I'm an FSD Beta participant as well.

Since getting into Beta, I have been following Tesla less and less. I'm actually shopping for an ICE car now. Looking at Porsche 911s.

FSD is a huge disappointment, and what Elon said in 2016 about FSD is what got me excited about Tesla. I am keeping both my Model 3s as they are now the kids' cars. I'm moving on as I find myself way better driver than FSD will ever become. Robots will be robots so FSD will always feel robotic and ridget. Driving is very fluid and dynamic which I don't think FSD will ever get there. You need to bend the laws and people do it all the time.

For example on a S curve, cars beside you will cut the corners. FSD needs to give them some room and move over as well by riding the line. FSD doesn't do that but instead freaks out and slams the brakes. Many example, all you have to do is go to a school while parents are picking up their kids or dropping them off. FSD doesn't know what to do when cars are all breaking basic road rules.

Hey, thanks. Would you be interested to participate in my interview? Shoot me an email: [email protected]