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Poll: Is FSD Worth the Cost?

Which is the best value for the Model 3?


  • Total voters
    639
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Good afternoon everyone,

After 10 months with EAP, I have mixed feelings on the whole thing. I think autopilot is fantastic, and use it every day.

But I find NOA to be an extremely frustrating experience because of how it manages the lane I'm in. It wants to change lanes whenever the car in front of me is going 2 MPH slower, at which point it cuts off the guy next to me, and stays parked in front of him for the next couple miles until it decides to move over. Taking exit ramps automatically is nice, but overall I don't find NOA to be helpful, which adds no value to me.

I was really excited for Enhanced Summon to be released. But after awkwardly blocking parking lots a couple times, I realized in current form it's not useful for anything other than a mostly empty parking lot. I would much rather it be cautious than risk hitting things, but if it has to be THIS cautious to be safe, I don't find it useful.

At this point, FSD isn't yet available, but after seeing how NOA and enhanced summon have been implemented, I have a tough time being optimistic. If are making another purchase today, I would opt for the standard autopilot and nothing more. I'm curious to know what you guys think? Is it worth forking over the money with the expectation that these features and FSD will evolve and be great? Or do you think it's unlikely they will add $7000 in value to your driving experience?
 
There are certainly people on here who use NoA every day and enjoy it and think the $7000 is well worth it.

There are others that say the only useful FSD feature is the auto lane change when you use the signal while AutoPilot is enabled. I personally don't see how this is worth $7000 (that is a huge sum of money), but some people enjoy this enough that they would happily pay again.

In a true value sense, no AP option is best. Save a few more thousand, lose AutoSteer and TACC (you still get regular cruise control after this). We really wanted the adaptive cruise and don't really use AutoSteer (another topic entirely), so even that I'm not sure was worth thousands. If you make frequent successful use of AutoSteer, I could see that being a substantial value and worth getting.

The rest of the FSD features we either don't use because they're not available on our roads (NoA), we don't like their performance to use daily (Auto park, auto lane change) or are flat out illegal to use right now (enhanced summon) in our province. So definitely not worth the CAD$9200 it would cost.

EDIT: I should add that the legality and availability are two huge things I don't see changing any time soon, so my response is somewhat location dependent. Even if the features were fully available, I wouldn't use them for the same reasons you mentioned. I don't have confidence in these improving fast enough to happen within the ownership period of some owners. Keep in mind their goal is to be "feature complete" for FSD (meaning add city driving at this point), which is not the same goal as a refined assisted driving experience that solves people's current concerns with it.
 
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I have the automatic lane switching disabled for the reason OP mentioned. And enhanced summon is pretty much useless since it is unpredictable. The only feature that is actually useful to me is the lane change without disabling AP. It's nice to see the traffic lights/signs and I hope Tesla enables the functionality to automatically brake for traffic lights and signs soon. Currently, buying it was a waste of money for me and more time Tesla takes the more money we have all wasted. I would hate to get to a point where I am trading in the car and FSD has not even been fully implemented yet.
 
Good afternoon everyone,

After 10 months with EAP, I have mixed feelings on the whole thing. I think autopilot is fantastic, and use it every day.

But I find NOA to be an extremely frustrating experience because of how it manages the lane I'm in. It wants to change lanes whenever the car in front of me is going 2 MPH slower, at which point it cuts off the guy next to me, and stays parked in front of him for the next couple miles until it decides to move over. Taking exit ramps automatically is nice, but overall I don't find NOA to be helpful, which adds no value to me.

I was really excited for Enhanced Summon to be released. But after awkwardly blocking parking lots a couple times, I realized in current form it's not useful for anything other than a mostly empty parking lot. I would much rather it be cautious than risk hitting things, but if it has to be THIS cautious to be safe, I don't find it useful.

At this point, FSD isn't yet available, but after seeing how NOA and enhanced summon have been implemented, I have a tough time being optimistic. If are making another purchase today, I would opt for the standard autopilot and nothing more. I'm curious to know what you guys think? Is it worth forking over the money with the expectation that these features and FSD will evolve and be great? Or do you think it's unlikely they will add $7000 in value to your driving experience?

Is NOA worth it is a very hard thing to answer and like any expensive purchase every person is different. In my opinion if a person has a long commute it is worth it if they turn off the auto switch lanes and control when the car switches lanes by using the turn signal. All the other features are also very beta and not functional enough. So, it's only really worth it if you have a long commute and like to having the latest coolest tech features and have the money of course. Hopefully it's true that the price will go up when those features get better. Then that will make it more worth it.. but who knows. That thinking is a gamble.
 
If it changes lanes as soon as there’s someone slow in front of you perhaps lower it from mad max mode where it wants to change lanes frequently. Also, if you know how to use NoA it’s fantastic. However you need to realize it isn’t for everyone’s driving style, so it can feel like it’s doing everything wrong when it’s just different from yours. I like how it’s predictable. EAP is the perfect package imo.
 
I have the automatic lane switching disabled for the reason OP mentioned. And enhanced summon is pretty much useless since it is unpredictable. The only feature that is actually useful to me is the lane change without disabling AP. It's nice to see the traffic lights/signs and I hope Tesla enables the functionality to automatically brake for traffic lights and signs soon. Currently, buying it was a waste of money for me and more time Tesla takes the more money we have all wasted. I would hate to get to a point where I am trading in the car and FSD has not even been fully implemented yet.

yeah lane changing without disabling ap is amazing and yeah.. the main reason its worth it
 
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i had the same experience as you, NOA drives like an moron. anyone who says differently is wrong or doesnt know how to drive lol. Its more of a party trick at the moment, FSD is nowhere near done in my opinion.


We have over 40K miles on the car and most of that was done using NoA.
However, we:
- Don't use the auto-lane change capability
- Don't use it in downtown Atlanta freeways because its always nagging you to get into the wrong lane

The immediate benefit to us of FSD over EAP for our $3K price (for a HW2.5 car) includes a compute engine upgrade, which is now scheduled for early March. Then, later this year I'll will be happy when it starts handling traffic lights properly.

I do wish Tesla had put the effort into reading speed limits signs instead of the smart summon, but I realize the financial motivation of delivering on a promise. Accounting rules: promise some capability to make a sale, and you have to hold back some revenue until that capability is delivered, which is also why Tesla's FSD-specific revenue sits on their balance sheet not in their P&L.
 
I fear Tesla is on the wrong track with FSD. 90% of the driving I (and many others) do is Home-->Work-->Home every day. I should be able to program everything about that route... where every stop sign is, where every stop light is, the rules for each intersection, location of the actual lights, my preferred lane, speed, etc. It will be great if FSD gets to the point of working in unfamiliar environment. But it would have SO MUCH more daily utility if I could program it to be a good self driver on my usual route.

It will be nice to get HW3 installed, but I don't think useful FSD is going to work without additional sensors, and there is not way they'll reach level 5.

I bought FSD because I already had EAP (there was no included standard autopilot in 2018). If I were buying a car today, there is no way I would pay $7k for FSD.
 
Buying FSD in its current form is in many ways the same as buying the stock in a start-up before its blockbuster product comes to the market. You are betting on two things:
  1. The finished product will arrive eventually, and
  2. The stock price of the start-up will take off when 1. happens.
I'd say both are good bets, just that it may take much longer than Elon would like you to believe.
 
I voted that it is worth it, but it's a really difficult decision. I think for your complaints, just turn your confirmations back on. Then if the car in front of you is going 2mph slower, and the car wants to change lanes but you don't, you simply don't hit the turn signal. As of today, I think this is the best way to use NoA.

The reason I voted "worth" is I really do believe we're getting close to stop signs and stop lights, and that will be really exciting. I of course could be wrong. The other reason is FOMO. It may not be worth $7,000 until it is... of course you could also just buy it at a later date if you have $7,000 sitting around, but most people finance these cars.
 
i had the same experience as you, NOA drives like an moron. anyone who says differently is wrong or doesnt know how to drive lol. Its more of a party trick at the moment, FSD is nowhere near done in my opinion.
Are you really going to go disagree with every post that has a different opinion than you? “Anyone who says differently is wrong or doesn’t know how to drive” lmao get a load of this guy.
 
i had the same experience as you, NOA drives like an moron. anyone who says differently is wrong or doesnt know how to drive lol. Its more of a party trick at the moment, FSD is nowhere near done in my opinion.
It will never be "Full Self Driving".
Never.
There are too many variables on the road. Until we drive on rails or equivalent system, there will be no FSD.
 
I appreciate everyone's comments.


The biggest concern I have of mine is whether or not FSD will ever be a useful reality. Tesla has proven an uncanny ability to exceed expectations with the physical product. I believe their software engineers are the best in the world, and the UI is among the best.

But Autopilot is still kind of glitchy, and I consider enhanced summon to be a complete disaster. if they have this much trouble getting the car to behave well in parking lots, how long will it take them to consistently handle itself on the road?

In its current form I think Autopilot is very useful, but not sure how much longer it would take for them to create a system that everyone would trust without constant supervision.
 
The only thing I find actually useful with FSD is the ability to lane change without disabling autopilot. This frustrates me to no end as the constant need to disable and re-enable just to change lanes, which is quite counter-intuitive as it forces you to shift focus.

Also, when a Freeway forks, or when there's a badly marked exit, with NoA the car knows which lane to take to keep on its route.
 
...how much longer...

I think it will take a very long time for a practical FSD but that doesn't mean I can't take advantage of an imperfect system.

It's worth the cost if you can find out what are its weaknesses and adapt to its imperfect capability.

Otherwise, save your money and wait until the system is proven.

The downside of waiting is it might take a very long time because there's none in the market that can be as versatile as Tesla's automation system.

If you want Waymo, you have to move to the 50 squared miles in Chandler, AZ and enroll in its rideshare program.

If you want GM Supercruise, then it disables itself in the city roads, construction zones, roads that's not prepared in advance by the system... and it still tries to catch up with Auto Lane Change this year.