Is FSD really worth the money?

[Allx]

EAP saved my rear a couple of times already . The diff to FSD is worth it even if just to futureproof the hardware if someone is on 2.x currently. Otherwise AP with lane departure avoidance is probably just as good if already on 3.0. That being said , EAP can’t deal w NYC traffic currently so it’s mostly useful on looooooooong boooooring drives up north. Just my 0.02$

 

[raptor5244]

The short answer is no it is not worth it just yet. But if you like the idea and want to help support moving toward autonomous driving then that is great. I only have the basic autopilot and it freak so me out like you said it brakes hard for no reason when other drivers are approaching on the lanes next to me. It just does a lot of unnerving stuff right now. My 40 years of experience are much better than it right now.

 

[OCR1]

I’m curious if anyone who purchased FSD and now has some experience with it would have purchased the car without it if they knew then what they know now about how well it works.

 

[run-the-joules]

The terminology and moving the goalposts that tesla did a few months ago makes this an infuriating discussion to try and have.

I bought the car for enhanced autopilot (the current "FSD") at the beginning of last year , and it was worth every cent. I wouldn't have bought the car without it, so I effectively paid $65k for autopilot. Never regretteddit.

Full self driving was a dumb thing for me to purchase at the time of delivery in hindsight, but whatever.

 

[verystandard]

I’m curious if anyone who purchased FSD and now has some experience with it would have purchased the car without it if they knew then what they know now about how well it works.

I purchased AP with the car, I never tried FSD and there are never FSD demo available to me. Anyone have a truly honest opinion about FSD (Not those overly excited youtuber's opinion)

Thanks!

 

[Tron 3]

It does drive the center of the lane - which has my undivided attention when a semi is in the neighboring lane... close compared to what I do.
Having done a 2,800 mile trip, I know It is worth every penny of the $5,000 I paid for auto-steer/ TACC. If the price for FSD hits $2,000 again, I will be all over it.

 

[CCIE]

I bought AP and FSD during the last fire sale. AP has some value. FSD... not so much. I definitely wouldn’t pay what they want for it now. Wait for the next fire sale.

 

[Misterbee]

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.

FSD is not yet available. Please don’t confuse Navigate on Autopilot with Full Self Driving.

 

[ucmndd]

FSD is not yet available. Please don’t confuse Navigate on Autopilot with Full Self Driving.

It’s not quite that cut and dry now that NoA is part of the FSD package, along with auto lane change, summon, etc.

If I was buying today I’d probably begrudgingly buy FSD just for the current capabilities - primarily auto lane change. The current “autopilot” package that includes only TACC and Autosteer without lane changes is severely nerfed, no doubt on purpose to force the hand of more people on the FSD upgrade.

Future FSD capabilities are nothing more than a promise. Tesla as a company is demonstrably terrible at the timely delivery of promised features. Sometimes they never materialize at all. I would not buy ANY Tesla feature ever again on the promise of future capabilities. Fool me once...

 

[argon2018]

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.

FSD is worth every penny. But wouldnt matter now if you have EAP. If you have only AP, then get FDS. There is not a single day that I go without activating AP.

 

[tinm]

What I'd like to see is a carefully done scientific study between three groups:

1) Drivers of older Teslas that have no AP or FSD hardware--they drive manually.

2) Drivers of Teslas that have AP hardware but don't use AP for driving, but do use the sensors for alerts.

3) Drivers of Teslas who actively use AP every day.

Over time, I'd love to know the safety stats between them. Especially between groups 2 and 3. I'm particularly keen on learning how better Group 2 drivers perform in dicey situations because they were alerted by sensors in the car, and manually got out of the scrape, versus Group 3 drivers where AP got them out of the scrape.

 

[ucmndd]

FSD is worth every penny. But wouldnt matter now if you have EAP. If you have only AP, then get FDS. There is not a single day that I go without activating AP.

I agree with this. EAP was the sweet spot.

 

[verystandard]

FSD is worth every penny. But wouldnt matter now if you have EAP. If you have only AP, then get FDS. There is not a single day that I go without activating AP.

May i ask what's your driving style? mostly highway or cities? appreciate your input

 

[OCR1]

FSD is not yet available. Please don’t confuse Navigate on Autopilot with Full Self Driving.

I’m not sure what you are talking about here. FSD is currently selling on the website for $6,000 and described as NOA, lane change, auto park and summon. FSD is the term Tesla has chosen to use to describe these features.

If you are suggesting that they should have picked a different name to describe these features because full self driving is misleading, I would agree with that.

 

[jbarnette]

I’m anxiously looking forward to the new FSD computer as I think much of the slow response of AP or NoA is due to reduced frame rates, resolution, and relatively deep processing pipelines with a neural net waiting for multiple frames to confirm/update its situational awareness. I also think much of the jerkiness is a result of “bypasses” of the deep pipeline to deal with emergent anomalies that really aren’t going to be a problem once the full pipeline is evaluated. At full speed, we may be able to simply wait for the full pipeline (now faster) with lower latency.

 

[argon2018]

May i ask what's your driving style? mostly highway or cities? appreciate your input

I live in Chicago and my driving involves highways with a lot of stop and go traffic sometimes lasting 40-50 mins to get home. And then in the streets. I pretty much activate AP 99% of the time but obviously in streets you have to be more
Careful. It has changed my life and would
Pay anything to have it as I can live without it now. Not to mention it keeps getting better and better

 

[Brando]

You’re probably right, but I really have no desire to be an aggressive driver. But where I drive nobody will let me in the lane just because I put my turn signal on. I’m just trying to navigate the chaos and avoid the really bad drivers.

On the few longer distance trips I’ve been on AP seemed to handle most things just fine. I just don’t do that many long trips to where I’m in non-congested freeway driving much.

I’d say it also generally does fine when the traffic is so heavy that it’s stop and go, where the speed rarely exceeds 20mph and all I need it to do is stay in the lane and stop and go as the traffic allows.

Frank Sinatra singing:
LA ... LA. If you can drive there you can drive anywhere
I'm goin ta drive it my way

 

[Leafdriver333]

while I was on free trial for AP and FSD, I hardly used NoA.
I don't like it changing lanes for me.
I liked AP on longer trips but I always worried about phantom braking.
I wish Summon was available for stand alone purchase for $500.
I don't care about parking assistance. I can parallel park by myself just fine.

I will buy AP for <$2000 when it goes on sale.

But I will never buy FSD.

 

[RandomX]

Before I decided on the Model 3 one thing I did was price out trucks from all of the big 3. When doing so, often times adding a sunroof to a truck in certain configurations added 6k+ to the overall cost and in almost all cases added at least 3k to the cost. in fact, sometimes to add something like a sunroof you have to go to the next trim level and it costs ~ +10k.

In terms of vehicle options, across all vehicles, I think the current AP and FSD are incredible. What other current new vehicle options even compare?

 

[Warbird]

I’m not sure what you are talking about here. FSD is currently selling on the website for $6,000 and described as NOA, lane change, auto park and summon. FSD is the term Tesla has chosen to use to describe these features.

There seems to be some confusion about terms, and I am probably not going to get this perfect (and as @ucmndd attempted to clarify above) but...

Folks who purchased Autopilot when it was called Enhanced Auto Pilot (EAP), got back then, and will continue to have in the future, features like "NOA, lane change, auto park and summon" even though they did not purchase Full Self Driving (FSD). But If you purchase a new car today, you do not get those features unless you pay for FSD. And if you only buy Autopilot (AP) today, you only get Traffic Aware Cruise Control (TACC) and basic Lane Keeping.

As for actual FSD features, there are none yet (at least not beyond what early EAP buyers have already). And there is no turning on FSD. Rather there are separate individual features. Like TACC, Lane Keeping (with manual stalk lane change), Navigate On Autopilot (first offered with auto lane change after stalk confirm), NOA w/o stalk confirm, etc. Lane Keeping is one feature. It doesn't act differently based on whether you have AP or FSD.

At some point there will be an FSD only feature that early EAP buyers will not have access to, but I do not think we are there yet. "NOA w/o stalk confirm" perhaps (but I'm pretty sure early EAP buyers got that too)?

And According to Mr. Musk (during Autonomy Day), there will soon be (in one "Elon time" month or so) features that will require not only FSD, but also HW3. Can't wait