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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

#291

Post by Zigurd »

Marsymars wrote: post #275
Zigurd wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This is basically impossible to determine based on how safe the car "feels". e.g. if it has a 99.9% chance of doing your daily commute without crashing and without you intervening, you can monitor it closely from the driver's seat for 6 months and there'll be ~90% chance that everything looks fine and you never need to intervene. But then if you start napping in the backseat on your commute, there's a 70% chance you'…

There are enough people who FA'ed and FO'ed in the form of ending up dead, or killing others, that we're not stuck in abstract calculations or speculation.

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

#292

Post by thebigman433 »

ajross wrote: post #183
buggy6257 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well... yeah, but the Tesla will do that on an empty road, then approach a slow car from behind and make a lane change decision to pass, then take your next exit and continue on through city streets, through all sorts of traffic conditions, to your destination. And it will monitor your attention with eye tracking instead of making you mess with the wheel. It's absolutely true that the rest of the industry is rolling…

> Well... yeah, but the Tesla will do that on an empty road, then approach a slow car from behind and make a lane change decision to pass, then take your next exit and continue on through city streets, through all sorts of traffic conditions, to your destination. And it will monitor your attention with eye tracking instead of making you mess with the wheel.

The point is that it now only does that if you subscribe. If I dont want to pay a monthly fee, an economy car now has a better feature set in this area

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

#293

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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.

> 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

I have a '22 Outback. My Dad has a Tesla of similar vintage. I have to pay about as much attention for FSD as I do with the Subaru, the difference being the Subaru is more predictable.

Can't wait for Waymo to start chopping into the top end of the market.

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

#294

Post by [deleted] »

enragedcacti wrote: post #193
toast0 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your car really not connected/connectable? I have a 2014 car that's connectable but no driver assistance; I had a 2017 (delivered mid 2016) with lane keeping and emergency braking which seemed pretty new and exciting, and it's connectable, all I would need to do is pay a big annual fee and also setup a 3g CDMA network. Couldn't do much with either if it's connected; I pulled the 3g modem from the 2014 when it was…

2026 CR-V and Civic both have trims with ADAS but no modem: https://mygarage.honda.com/s/hondalink-product-compatibility

[deleted]

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

#295

Post by apublicfrog »

SilverElfin wrote: post #164
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?

It looks to be completely free on most BYD models - as in no one time fee or subscription fee, but just part of the car: https://insideevs.com/news/750244/byd-smart-driving-cheap/

Wow, I've never seen an article that misleading from the first line!

> "Full Self-Driving" costs $8,000. BYD includes its version for free on a $9,300 car.

These are unrelated things. Tesla's comparative offering (at the time this article was written) was also included for free.

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

#296

Post by nunez »

I love FSD, but this is awful. Given that this is almost certainly being done to juice the FSD subscriber count so that Elon hits his 10M sub target, I'd even go as far as to say that this is legally questionable.

Also, this move is beyond stupid IMO. Autopilot is Tesla's ONLY moat now that their Supercharger network is open to everyone. Gating that behind a $99/mo sub is guaranteed to make buyers shop elsewhere, especially now that the EV tax credit is no longer and the OEMs (and our O&G friendly admin) are rallying around EREVs.

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

#297

Post by nunez »

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…

Only in this radically pro-business administration would brazenly anti-consumer behavior like this be acceptable.

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

#298

Post by oxag3n »

Waterluvian wrote: post #126
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.

When I was testing vehicles in 2019 I found that a bunch of them had lane keeping but they kind of "bounced" between the lines. I got a Forester because for reason I typed but but aren't really topic relevant, it was far, far nicer and works amazingly. And for years whenever a Teslafriend would tout their lane keeping, I was just, "uhh yeah my base model Subaru does that." "Oh no, no this is better, this does a lot m…

9 yo Honda and yes, lane keep assist feels more like ruts on a road - it will steer when closer to the lane, but not always, and won't align car with the lane .

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

#299

Post by ajross »

nradov wrote: post #251
ajross wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly I needed to be more precise: Tesla's vehicle autonomy features have no meaningful competition in the consumer auto space, period. Anyone who tries to claim otherwise is flogging some kind of angle, generally a political one. And I say this as someone who despises Musk's politics. But the cars his company makes are way, way, way ahead on this particular feature.

Is that a joke? Tesla's consumer vehicle autonomy features are ahead in some ways but way behind GM and Mercedes-Benz in others. In particular the Mercedes Drive Pilot system is true SAE level 3 where the manufacturer assumes legal liability for vehicle operation. Tesla has nothing like that available to consumers.

Drive Pilot cannot perform a single one of the maneuvers I listed above.

It's just a stunt. They took a machete to the feature set to find Just One Thing that would meet the requirements. All it does is use radar to follow another car on a selection of fixed, geofenced limited access highways. It can't handle the leader changing lanes, or going too fast (won't even get to the speed limit). It won't navigate, it won't change lanes. It can't even operate on an open road.

But it's "L3V31 THr333", so otherwise rational nerds get to yell about it on the internet. No one actually shows this thing off in their cars, it's not useful for real driving. FSD drives me around literally every day.

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