Poll: Is FSD Worth the Cost?

[JohnMon]

I also find that a useful function of NoA is to help with the right fork on the road when there are many exits in close proximity. Other than that, I find it's only useful when there are few cars on the road and I am driving slightly faster than the other cars. Then it's a relaxing drive.
NoA does not do a good job with medium to heavy traffic (too many issues to mention here). For that, I just use regular AP and decide myself when to make lane changes.
Not sure if one exists, but a focus group to highlight where NoA falls short might be a good thing for Tesla to initiate. Some of the issues are small but very annoying.

 

[G78M3]

Short answer: No, in my opinion.

Long answer: since FSD is a purchase that cannot be carried over to your next vehicle, the cost is not an absolute number, it must be amortized over your expected ownership.

Take the likelihood of full FSD benefits becoming available before when you think you may want to upgrade your car (new models, upgraded power trains etc), divide $7000 over the number of months and then decide if it’s worth for you.

 

[Master Chief]

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.

You hit a point that I have made and I only have 5000 miles on my new MX. If I park in the same spot each day and pull into the same driveway each day and back into the same supercharger lot each week, I would expect the Tesla to learn from me and do those trips with perfection. Why could this vehicle not pull perfectly into a garage after only one or two lessons? Why can't it back perfectly into a Supercharger spot?

I know that Elon is hiring up a bunch of AI guys, but what I am talking about is machine habit learning, not Artificial Intelligence. The cars should be able to learn from the drivers. When a merging car comes up on the right, should it slow down, speed up or shift to the left? We all have our style and I would think that it could learn pretty quickly from easily measured parameters, what the driver would do and how to be safe about it.

 

[Ugene]

To me, it is a wrong question. If I could ask for at least $3K out of $5K I paid for EAP back I would. Since November 2018 the two main features I paid the money for - TACC and lane change change without turning AP off - became less usable, almost unusable, in my everyday driving due to phantom breaking and cancelling lane change.

I don't know what kind of software company Tesla is but the major ones I worked for, before changing behavior that can result in breaking existing customers, would introduce an option that preserves existing behaviour; perhaps something like "I will track stationary objects myself, you please just drive and change lanes like you did before".

 

[Rover72]

Those of us who were early purchasers of the Model 3 had the option of EAP. EAP went away with AP & then FSD.
Some of us were able to purchase FSD last spring with a narrow window for $2K. The thinking of this user knowing Elon time was it will eventually be here. The incremental steps are getting there, but a bit underwhelming so far for most.
However, I hasten add that my 2018 M3 LR AWD is as good as anyone purchasing a 2020 today! Thanks Tesla for all of the various tweets & enhancements. Defy anyone @ this point in time to say that about any other car on the market.

 

[Hacov]

I am not holding my breath on FSD. NOA I also find worthless. It seems to want to change lanes for an upcoming exit way too early.
I use auto-steer and smart cruise control all the time, but often have to leave auto-steer off. In California, I have stickers that let me use the car pool lane by myself. That is great, but if I leave auto-steer on, the car insists on being well centered in the lane. The problem I have is that motorcycles use the space between the car pool lane and the fast lane to "white line" between cars. With auto-steer on, they often cannot get by and will honk or rev their motor to let me know they are there. I have to disable auto-steer, move left in the lane (where the car starts yelling at me to take control) and move back when done. It is annoying at best.

I would really like to see an option on auto-steer that lets me choose left aligned, centered, or right aligned in the lane so motorcycles can get by. Even smarter would be for the car to see the bike coming up on the side, and move over for me, but I think that is asking too much.

The other things that is VERY annoying about motorcycles that pass along the lane line is that I often get phantom braking as they go by. Can be very annoying to suddenly have the car break hard as the bike passes by the front right of the car.

I am also seeing a LOT of phantom braking when the car in front of me changes lanes. Auto-cruise will slow down on the lane change, and then break fairly hard as the car moves out of the lane. Seems like a bug to me.

This stuff has a long way to go IMHO.

 

[Davidjess]

FSD is worth over $100K (buy and hold at least until Tesla raises their factory price—after that, sell your extra Teslas or keep them as business assets), and will maintain such value until there is competition and the coming shortage has been drawn off... There is substantial risk, but I have great confidence that it will all work out just fine.

Our biggest risk is not technological, competitive, or even legislative. It is only our 600-kg partner, Tesla, who loves us and wants to share with us but with a single unintentional swipe could ruin our life ;-)...

 

[jdulemba]

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.

Have you tried openstreetmaps.org? There is a tutorial there, and you may be able to adapt your travels on there, and I have read it will allow your vehicle to "learn" from it. I have not tried it, but did see it posted on a tesla page.

 

[Patriot]

I purchased FSD for $7,000 and regret it. FSD is complicated, and further away than I thought when I bought the car. I don't blame Tesla for not solving all of the hard problems yet, but I do blame them for making promises that they can't keep. NOA is not very useful for me, and like others here, the ability to change lanes without taking it off of AP is the primary benefit right now, which is certainly not worth $7,000 (to me). I hope FSD is released before I sell the car. Some day, $7,000 might seem like a bargain, but right now, it's not worth it.

 

[jdulemba]

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.

I also fear that FSD is not in the cards. Here in Texas the sun can be VERY bright. When the road is covered in bright sunshine, the cameras are blind, and the same in a heavy rain. There is zero chance with just cameras of ever having FSD with some of those negatives.

 

[Knightshade]

You hit a point that I have made and I only have 5000 miles on my new MX. If I park in the same spot each day and pull into the same driveway each day and back into the same supercharger lot each week, I would expect the Tesla to learn from me and do those trips with perfection. Why could this vehicle not pull perfectly into a garage after only one or two lessons? Why can't it back perfectly into a Supercharger spot?

Because that's not, at all, how the system works.

Individual cars don't "learn" anything. They don't change their behavior based on the driver. At all.

Cars feed data back to Tesla, who uses it to train the overall system back at home base.

Behavior changes only happen when they push out a fleet-wide update.

Letting each individual car "learn" on its own would be a nightmare to try and figure out any weird behavior or improve the overall system for the fleet.... not to mention it means bad drivers would train bad car behavior directly.

 

[Wllllam]

Good afternoon everyone,

..

But I find NOA to be an extremely frustrating experience...

Remember: It is beta software.

Being part of the development cycle is a once in history experience. I'm very excited by how it improves month after month

 

[plunk99]

Hahaha so amusing to see people say they'll buy FSD when it does something more. If Tesla can get folks to buy it for $7,000 or $6,000 (me) or $5,000 or $3,000 why do you think the price would ever come down (notwithstanding the erratic past prices)?

Elon's math (last April): "If we make all cars with FSD package self-driving, as planned, any such Tesla should be worth $100k to $200k, as utility increases from ~12 hours/week to ~60 hours/week" Elon Musk: Tesla cars should be worth $100k to $200k with Full Self-Driving package - Electrek

so SR+ with FSD @ approx $50,000 purchase price to Elon is worth at least $100,000. He graciously splits the diff with you, so FSD is worth an additional $25,000 when it works (which translates to $7,000 plus $25,000 = $32,000 added on)

"Oh but I'll trade it in before then" Then you lose. He's saying a Tesla will last 11 years and actual FSD will double or triple its price.

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2019/04/23/tesla-robotaxis-owners-earn-money-musk-tsla.html >>
By Tesla’s estimates, owners might be able to earn $30,000 in gross revenue from their cars per year, or more than $300,000 in revenue over the 11-year lifespan of their car.

 

[Garlan Garner]

Is the name of this thread - Who hates FSD?

I don't mind standing alone - I love beta FSD and its improvements over time.

 

[ElectricIAC]

Is the name of this thread - Who hates FSD?

I don't mind standing alone - I love beta FSD and its improvements over time.

Except FSD doesn’t exist for paying customers yet..

Unless you count some visualizations.

 

[Garlan Garner]

The entire planet is gravitating to criticism and hatred...….

Trying to find a positive thread about Tesla. Anyone know of one?

 

[Garlan Garner]

Except FSD doesn’t exist yet.

Unless you count some visualizations.
View attachment 512289

So FSD does NOTHING more than what AP does? The only difference is the display?

 

[ElectricIAC]

Unless you’re running a SW version vastly different than others FSD right now is still just EAP by a different name.

Take it from someone who’s owned an EAP and an FSD configured car both at the same time.

 

[Garlan Garner]

Unless you’re running a SW version vastly different than others FSD right now is still just EAP by a different name.

I heard from a birdee that FSD does something with lane changing.

Can someone go out and try to have EAP lane change and let us know if that works?

 

[Knightshade]

So FSD does NOTHING more than what AP does? The only difference is the display?

FSD does NOTHING more than EAP did, other than visualizations. So pre-march-2019 FSD buyers have gained nothing functional at all.

Post march-2019 FSD buyers gain all the features EAP used to have beyond TACC and single-lane-autosteer.

I heard from a birdee that FSD does something with lane changing.

Can someone go out and try to have EAP lane change and let us know if that works?

Works exactly the same as FSD. As I just explained to you. Since FSD adds nothing functional at all over EAP right now.