Second thoughts on FSD

[Alset2go]

I drive down the M40 each day to London...I have EAP which has NOA (Sounds like line of duty) and I can tell you that in traffic say going South at Junction 9,4 and 1A there is no way you can use NOA...I am sure it will get better but in busy traffic it is hopeless.

Coming home,Northbound after 11pm when less busy it is much better.It has a few Pulls and Pushes and when it takes me off at my junction it all seems ok but then has severe lane confusion on the off ramp.My friend who has a 16 plate MS says exactly the same so not just my car.
I know this will get better but the way they have restructured the AP/FSD in UK currently is not worth it.

That all said I love my MS and just learning to optimise NOA use/Cruise for my journey.

 

[tess19]

Drove the model X in the states and my impression was its really good when there is less traffic. When there is lots of cars, I think the human would be better and quicker in judging gaps and speed.

 

[BubblegumPete]

I have to say, just come back from my usual trip I do, which is a round trip of about 130 miles (mainly motorways M25/M40). Having adaptive cruise control and lane assist is really nice but if I could have the lane change as well that would be perfect.

There were many moments on the motorway where I'd of set my speed, all was good but then I'd come up behind other traffic. Because it was so good I'd forget that I was now doing 15 mph slower than I wanted to so would have to move back into the fast lane and re-engage. It's not a massive pain but when you get used to just letting the car do all the leg work, having to then keep disengaging and engaging the autopilot is a bit off a faff so it would be nice to just have the car cruise past slower traffic all without touching any buttons.

But still Autolane change is not worth £5000.

 

[BubblegumPete]

Also worth noting I had it do the dreaded sudden braking for no reason, very disconcerting. It only did it the once and I think it may of been either something to do with an ambulance passing or the shadow of a bridge.

 

[MrBadger]

@BubblegumPete

I think I read in another post that part of your journey was M3 - that’s my part of the world (mostly 1-4a) and I’m a little concerned about many reports of phantom braking possibly being linked to bridges and gantry’s. My part of the M3 is full of them so hoping that AP, let alone FSD is not going to be useless along the stretches I will mainly be on.

 

[BubblegumPete]

@BubblegumPete

I think I read in another post that part of your journey was M3 - that’s my part of the world (mostly 1-4a) and I’m a little concerned about many reports of phantom braking possibly being linked to bridges and gantry’s. My part of the M3 is full of them so hoping that AP, let alone FSD is going to be useless along the stretches I will mainly be on.

Hi Vanilla, yes I have to come back from Reading to Bromley so when the M4 is bad I cut through to the M3. It's junction 1-3. Although now I really think about it it wasn't on the M3 that this happened it was the M4 and it was in the 50 mph zone between junction 10 and 11 going towards Reading and I think it may of been caused not by the bridge but by all the temporary barriers they have in place around the edges. I was in the fast lane but the lanes are really narrow so maybe the car just panicked as it felt things were way too close to it. Still not great though. Luckily no one was behind me.
I also think that the breaking feels harder than what it actually is because you're not expecting it and also not controlling it.

 

[Peteski]

Whilst waiting for my call to say that my M3LR has arrived and ready to be collected, I am having second thoughts of whether I should have the FSD at £4900. It can do

• Lane change - useful if there are less BMW/Audi drivers on the motorways
• Navigate on Autopilot - does it work properly in the UK with so many roundabouts
• Self parking - cant see myself using after showing off a few times.
• Advance summon - most likely to use as it would be nice for the car to drive out of the garage or from the sainsbury carpark to pick me up.
• Robo taxi - yeah.....

But is it worth £4900?
But if I cancel FSD (can i?) will I be push back to 2020 delivery.

As a few others have already mentioned, auto lane-change is useful to avoid having to disengage auto-steer every time you change lanes on a motorway/dc, but I can think of many other things I would rather spend £5k on!

My Model X has EAP (which is the same as current FSD) and based on that experience it was an easy decision to save the cash on my M3 order. Basic AP does everything you need except for the lane change, which is actually quite flaky and can be irritating anyway! In your shoes I would upgrade to the P model, cancel FSD and still save a few grand net.

 

[BubblegumPete]

As a few others have already mentioned, auto lane-change is useful to avoid having to disengage auto-steer every time you change lanes on a motorway/dc, but I can think of many other things I would rather spend £5k on!

My Model X has EAP (which is the same as current FSD) and based on that experience it was an easy decision to save the cash on my M3 order. Basic AP does everything you need except for the lane change, which is actually quite flaky and can be irritating anyway! In your shoes I would upgrade to the P model, cancel FSD and still save a few grand net.

Yeah agree. I'm getting my car wrapped for protection which is going to be about £3000 so I see that as a better way to spend the money.

 

[dan223]

Whilst waiting for my call to say that my M3LR has arrived and ready to be collected, I am having second thoughts of whether I should have the FSD at £4900. It can do

• Lane change - useful if there are less BMW/Audi drivers on the motorways
• Navigate on Autopilot - does it work properly in the UK with so many roundabouts
• Self parking - cant see myself using after showing off a few times.
• Advance summon - most likely to use as it would be nice for the car to drive out of the garage or from the sainsbury carpark to pick me up.
• Robo taxi - yeah.....

But is it worth £4900?
But if I cancel FSD (can i?) will I be push back to 2020 delivery.

Lane change - is useful, not worth 5k though
Navigate on autopilot - You can only use this on motorways at the moment, so no roundabouts to contend with
Self parking - Maybe useful but understand its pretty slow
Advanced summon - Believe the range has been crippled for eu regs, need to be on bluetooth and therefore be around 10meters or so away from the car

 

[WannabeOwner]

Here's an idea .. .Elon are you listening?

Make FSD a free transfer to next car ... far more people will buy it now, and if FSD is any good by the time they sell then the new owner of the car will too ...

 

[tess19]

Still undecided on the FSD. If i save that money, I could go for the p- with 3sec 0-60. But got the FSD for a reduced 4.9k instead of the new 5.8k price. Also you never know what FSD functions gets upgraded OTA and what they charge for FSD after deliver.

 

[Peteski]

Still undecided on the FSD. If i save that money, I could go for the p- with 3sec 0-60. But got the FSD for a reduced 4.9k instead of the new 5.8k price. Also you never know what FSD functions gets upgraded OTA and what they charge for FSD after deliver.

Go for the P-
The performance upgrade is real, FSD is an expensive promise and nothing remotely like a self-driving car. Standard AP will quite happily drive you through traffic jams and take the strain on monotonous long haul drives. What else do you really want from it?

 

[MrBadger]

I recon that most people will get very little (once the novelty wears off and wear and tear bills start) out of either AWD vs P-, or FSD.

Hopefully FSD will get better with time and P- resell value may well benefit from what really does appear to be a discounted difference vs AWD. On flip side, potentially increased insurance costs and wear and tear of P- may go some way to offsetting any increase in value.

Would I upgrade current AWD to P- even if I could keep tow hitch? Nope. I'm not expecting to use AWD performance let alone that of performance.

Would I add FSD option to M3. Nope unless I'm planning on keeping car long term, which I am. Even then its a tough call. And only reason why I entertaining it is because I think AP currently has some shortfalls and they are either sorted by FSD or are promised to be included in future versions of FSD. In which case, it becomes a gamble. Spec now (in for a penny, in for a pound) and just enjoy the improvements when they drip in (my reason to buy now, but still not comitted), or wait to see if promises do actually materialise and it becomes worth the extra, or it gets discounted and reappraise what its probably worth to me at that point in time.

Food for thought.

 

[Peteski]

I recon that most people will get very little (once the novelty wears off and wear and tear bills start) out of either AWD vs P-, or FSD.

Hopefully FSD will get better with time and P- resell value may well benefit from what really does appear to be a discounted difference vs AWD. On flip side, potentially increased insurance costs and wear and tear of P- may go some way to offsetting any increase in value.

Would I upgrade current AWD to P- even if I could keep tow hitch? Nope. I'm not expecting to use AWD performance let alone that of performance.

Would I add FSD option to M3. Nope unless I'm planning on keeping car long term, which I am. Even then its a tough call. And only reason why I entertaining it is because I think AP currently has some shortfalls and they are either sorted by FSD or are promised to be included in future versions of FSD. In which case, it becomes a gamble. Spec now (in for a penny, in for a pound) and just enjoy the improvements when they drip in (my reason to buy now, but still not comitted), or wait to see if promises do actually materialise and it becomes worth the extra, or it gets discounted and reappraise what its probably worth to me at that point in time.

Food for thought.

It's just the cost of FSD which is such poor value for money. Having experienced it first hand over the last 18 months I'm not even considering it for my M3 order. Making basic AP standard was very nice though, otherwise I would have had nothing! TACC alone is a great feature and Autosteer is very competent on motorways and dual carriageways. Shame lane-change isn't included, but no way I'm paying nearly £6k for that!

The performance on the other hand is a must-have for me at the giveaway price it is currently. Although the LR AWD is a pretty quick car in its own right, the P- is simply in another league. It's not so much the 0-60 I'm particularly excited about, it's all that extra mid-range torque that will make it sublime at any speed under a ton. I can fully understand why you might not need or want the extra performance, but anyone coming from a BMW M3 or similar performance ICE will really appreciate it. For £1500 extra it's ridiculously cheap hp too! In any ICE car you would be paying £10k+ for that kind of performance gain.

 

[tess19]

The more I think about it, i'd rather go for the P- rather than spend 5k on the rarely used FSD. But on the website, the option to change has disappeared. I have emailed my contact at Tesla but no reply from them. Is there a better UK contact email i can use to get some sort of response? Help!

 

[MrBadger]

[email protected]

 

[ACarneiro]

I did the same
It may take a couple of days from them to acknowledge your email, though.

 

[Peteski]

The more I think about it, i'd rather go for the P- rather than spend 5k on the rarely used FSD. But on the website, the option to change has disappeared. I have emailed my contact at Tesla but no reply from them. Is there a better UK contact email i can use to get some sort of response? Help!

Good move I think. The more I think about the idea of FSD, the more I realise it's not actually something I would particularly want anyway. I much prefer driving my car than being a passenger, except for monotonous stretches of motorway and crawling traffic jams, where basic AP actually does a pretty good job anyway. Only useful missing feature from basic AP is auto lane change, which is not really fully automatic anyway (you still have to manually signal to move over in the UK version).

So £5-6k for semi-auto lane change, nav on AP (which I'm struggling to see the point of as you still have to manually signal for the suggested lane changes), summon (also crippled in the uk) and self-parking is a joke. Even adding in promised future features like traffic light recognition has no real interest for me. For sure basic AP is slightly irritating for lane changes (having to keep cancelling auto-steer), but not enough of a problem to throw £6k at!

I suppose the decision is a lot easier for me as I have first hand experience of current FSD (in the form of EAP) on my Model X. I think basic AP gives you 90% of the genuinely useful functionality of current FSD, with manual lane change being the only real disadvantage in everyday driving. FSD sounds a lot more impressive than it actually is in reality. Nav on AP in particular is far less useful than you might expect and if you follow its lane change suggestions, you will be overtaken by at least 10 Audis at every change if the road is remotely busy!

Anyway that's my 10p worth of advice as a current FSD user. It will no doubt improve over time as EAP has, but you have to ask yourself how much of the driving experience do you ultimately want to give away?

 

[tess19]

Did they say if you get bumped down the queue?

 

[ACarneiro]

One bloke said yes, one bloke said no.
For the amount of money, I decided I could wait