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Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

arstechnica.com

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Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#131

Post by johnnyanmac »

scottyah wrote: post #44
nxtfari wrote: post #18

My guess is Tesla is desperately in need of Q1 revenue and they want people to scarcity buy FSD lifetime @ $8K. Otherwise the strategy doesn’t make any sense. They’re saying FSD and basic Autopilot will go behind subscription and that subscription prices are expected to go up. Basically laying out that they’re planning to lock you into a subscription and then price gouge. It’s so transparent that I think the point is…

1. There's a CA lawsuit against the FSD name, Tesla has to fix it by Feb 14th (the last day FSD is being sold). I wonder if it'll just be a rebrand for the new service. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-and-media/news-releases/d... 2. Elon's Trillion Dollar Payout is tied to a certain number of FSD Subscriptions. 3. Some consumers were sold that they would get hardware upgrades for FSD. I'm pretty sure Tesla would l…

4. The details are pretty straightforward. Continual passive income is more reliable than the boom bust cycles that is buying cars. The latter requires you finding more and more customers. The former is extracting more money from an assumedly commuted customer.

In theory, subscriptions are cheaper for users as well when done right and it works better with how people are compensated. But as usual, greed consumes all and if everything is a bill, that's more ways to eat at your long term wealth.

In other words: you will own nothing and like it.

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#132

Post by jjulius »

dylan604 wrote: post #78
throwawa14223 wrote: post #31

Just like all subscriptions this kills my interest in it. Tech is only interesting if it isn’t locked in a corporate data center.

you must be really bored with pretty much all the popular tech today then

... and? Nothing wrong with not buying into what's popular.

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#133

Post by burningChrome »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #29

Wait a minute. My recent-ish car has LKAS. It recognizes white lines (or possibly curbs too) and if both boundaries of the lane are recongized, will steer for you - for 10 seconds maybe, before it nags you provide some steering input. But in those 10 seconds it's perfectly capable of smoothly steering around bends in the road on its own. And it is a useful safety feature even if only nudging the steering wheel while…

Was watching OPLive last week. Every week they have a segment called "Triple Play" where they have law enforcement send them videos of crazy chases and other interesting experiences.

This last week they had a guy who had completely passed out in his car and was fast asleep at the wheel. A state trooper pulled up alongside it and could see the guy slumped over his wheel. Apparently the car was essentially weaving back and forth between the lane lines because the car had LKAS enabled, effectively keeping the car from driving off the road.

The state trooper followed the car for several miles trying to decide what he should do. He tried several times by running his lights and sirens, honking, etc to no avail. He finally found a safe spot and successfully pitted the car to a stop. During the pit, the man suddenly woke up - for obvious reasons.

They later found out he had been working 22 hours straight and then was driving to his GF's house several hours away for the weekend and was just exhausted and fell asleep at the wheel.

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#134

Post by whynotmaybe »

b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #103
hermanzegerman wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know you can just buy it?

They already bought the car .

I'm wondering whether it's a generational vision and that the concept of ownership of software with hardware is slowly becoming obsolete.

Every young adult I know uses a subscription for everything I used to buy. Even though they own the device on which they consume it.

Spotify for cd's, Netflix-Disney-Amazon for vhs and dvd's, Udemy-Masterclass for books.

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#135

Post by loloquwowndueo »

TacoCommander wrote: post #89
YY59487598347 wrote: post #37

Do BYD and other Chinese EVs have this insane subscription scheme for basic features on their cars, or is that only a feature of North American/European manufacturers?

I am also curious about this, how does the average person in China feel about subscriptions?

BYD is available in a lot of countries outside China.

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#136

Post by fortran77 »

The latest version of FSD is amazing. We have it on our Plaids (2024 and 2026 models) and I probably only actually "drive" 5% of the time. There's a camera to see if you're paying attention to the road, so no longer any need to keep your hands on the wheel. It'll start from a parking space and go all the way into my house and back into the garage.

Of course, I don't trust it as much as I trust Waymo's system, and I'm very careful when using it in rain or fog...

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#137

Post by Waterluvian »

buggy6257 wrote: post #118
Someone1234 wrote: post #96

A new Tesla, without subscription, now has worse Steering Assist than a $22K Toyota Corolla. Back when Autopilot launched, in consumer cars, it was pretty unique. But the market has moved on significantly, and basic Steering Assist/Full-Speed-Range Automatic Cruise Control, are pretty universal features today.

My 5 year old Subaru has been able to lane keep and auto follow to the point that a 2h drive on the freeway is me tapping the wheel every ten seconds to keep it enabled while I watch for idiots. It has been able to do this since I bought it, and I haven’t paid a dime extra. Car cost 30k.

I have a 2020 Forester and I've come to describing it as "I no-longer drive on the highway, I manage the car." Sometimes I'll get nervous and take over. But even in stop-and-go traffic, it has behaved perfectly.

My only complaint is that there's an over-eager PID loop with lane keeping. If I want to pass a transport truck and want to kind of edge to the left of my lane when doing so, it will keep trying to compensate, which I can feel in the wheel, so I compensate for as well. And if I let go of the wheel and let it win, it suddenly flings me towards the right side of the lane.

I suspect this is because it isn't programmed to think that I'm making adjustments, it probably just thinks there's some weirdness in the vehicle dynamics/road characteristics that requires extra compensation.

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#138

Post by MarkusWandel »

Retric wrote: post #110
noahmbarr wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO; you should try the product. The car basically drives me everywhere with no interventions, including on errands around SF. Just plug in where via the Google Maps view. I’ve been paying the monthly for a while. Very worth it to me.

“basically” is doing some heavy lifting here as they aren’t good enough to let you ignore the road without taking serious risks. So you’re stuck in the drivers seat paying attention to traffic, but you get to mostly avoid turning the steering wheel, yay what an awesome improvement definitely worth 8k or 100$/month IMO adaptive crude control that works down to 0MPH is still the sweet spot.

Also standard equipment now (in my mid-level Honda Civic). However once gone to zero, it won't roll again until you nudge the throttle pedal. Also, just like lane keeping it "needs supervision". Once someone braked hard up ahead to do an almost-missed left turnoff, and I let the adaptive cruise control do what it does. And it missed it and I had to brake manually, fairly hard too!

But for driving in slow traffic with no passing lane for the next half hour (Highway 7 between Perth and Marmora, for Ontarians) it's a godsend. Just let it handle it and chill.

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#139

Post by dylan604 »

jjulius wrote: post #132
dylan604 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you must be really bored with pretty much all the popular tech today then

... and? Nothing wrong with not buying into what's popular.

and nothing. it's a comment on how everything is closed tech by the platforms, not a knock on being bored with that fact. i fully agree and do not participate on those platforms.

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#140

Post by Zigurd »

qwerpy wrote: post #107
SilverElfin wrote: post #93

[flagged]

Politics aside, FSD is quite awesome these days. It’s pretty much at “press a button and enjoy the ride” capability, although you do have to make a show of paying attention to the road. My truck came with lifetime FSD which I’m happy with, and two family members pay for the monthly subscription because of the quality of life improvement.

Would you take a nap in the backseat while you ride? How much more improvement do you think it would need before you'd be willing to do that?
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