I get the general sense that most of the forum members strongly believe in the functionality of AP/EAP/FSD. I feel like an outlier here because while I love everything else about our Model 3’s, I don’t like AP or FSD.
I’l preface it by saying that I live in the LA/Orange County area where heavy traffic and crazy drivers are the norm. There is almost always someone in my blind spots at all times and there is a lot of traffic weaving in and out of lanes very quickly.
When I’m using just plain AP, I find the car randomly brakes when there is nobody in front of me. It drives in other people’s blind spots. It drives way too fast when my lane is moving quickly but the lanes on both the left and right are moving much slower. And it drives very rough, meaning lots of abrupt accelerating and braking as the traffic conditions are changing.
When I add FSD, my car rarely seems to be comfortable making lane changes, even in mad max mode. It attempts a lane change and then aborts, or it leaves the turn signal running while car after car passes me and it never seems comfortable making the change. It nags me to get in the right lane behind a truck three miles before my exit. Or it nags me to get in the left lane when I’m getting ready to transition to another freeway. It nags me to keep my hands on the wheel even when my hands have been on the wheel the whole time.
As far as it’s overall skill as a driver, I would rate it a D. When I’m using it I feel like I’m supervising a student driver that is just learning how to drive. I’m letting the car drive while keeping my hands on the wheel at all times just in case it screws up, just like they used to do in driving school when they had those cars with two wheels and two sets of brakes. And the whole time I’m doing this I’m thinking “Why am I teaching this car how to drive when I could just drive it myself far better on my own with much less stress?”
We talk a lot about HW3 and the general consensus is that AP is feature complete and HW3 won’t improve it. Really? So it’s never going to be better than a really bad student driver at driving my car? And even with all of that extra computing power Tesla is not going to attempt to make AP any better unless I pay them extra for FSD?
Anyways, just needed to get that off my chest. I’m still a big Tesla fan but I’m not an FSD fan. At least not yet. Maybe some day if it really can demonstrate to me that it can drive better than I can, but until then...no thanks.
I’l preface it by saying that I live in the LA/Orange County area where heavy traffic and crazy drivers are the norm. There is almost always someone in my blind spots at all times and there is a lot of traffic weaving in and out of lanes very quickly.
When I’m using just plain AP, I find the car randomly brakes when there is nobody in front of me. It drives in other people’s blind spots. It drives way too fast when my lane is moving quickly but the lanes on both the left and right are moving much slower. And it drives very rough, meaning lots of abrupt accelerating and braking as the traffic conditions are changing.
When I add FSD, my car rarely seems to be comfortable making lane changes, even in mad max mode. It attempts a lane change and then aborts, or it leaves the turn signal running while car after car passes me and it never seems comfortable making the change. It nags me to get in the right lane behind a truck three miles before my exit. Or it nags me to get in the left lane when I’m getting ready to transition to another freeway. It nags me to keep my hands on the wheel even when my hands have been on the wheel the whole time.
As far as it’s overall skill as a driver, I would rate it a D. When I’m using it I feel like I’m supervising a student driver that is just learning how to drive. I’m letting the car drive while keeping my hands on the wheel at all times just in case it screws up, just like they used to do in driving school when they had those cars with two wheels and two sets of brakes. And the whole time I’m doing this I’m thinking “Why am I teaching this car how to drive when I could just drive it myself far better on my own with much less stress?”
We talk a lot about HW3 and the general consensus is that AP is feature complete and HW3 won’t improve it. Really? So it’s never going to be better than a really bad student driver at driving my car? And even with all of that extra computing power Tesla is not going to attempt to make AP any better unless I pay them extra for FSD?
Anyways, just needed to get that off my chest. I’m still a big Tesla fan but I’m not an FSD fan. At least not yet. Maybe some day if it really can demonstrate to me that it can drive better than I can, but until then...no thanks.