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Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

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Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#81

Post by penjelly »

mg wrote: post #37

I think a good indicator if it is useful or not is to look at how much it is actually used. Tesla published a chart of cumulative miles driven over time on page 8 of their latest quarterly update: https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/... So far, I'm not sure what to make of it. The chart looks somewhat exponential. But since they brought more and more cars onto the road, one would expect expone…

I wonder if those Vegas loop Tesla use FSD? Or if the Teslas being tested in parking lots count as FSD miles. Didn't Tesla game their range numbers? Didn't Musk say "we could've gamed our demos, but we actually didn't!" for their city to city demo? Also notable they released a 30 day free trial so it makes sense to see an uptick

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#82

Post by ClassyJacket »

hankman86 wrote: post #64

They should teach Tesla’s “autopilot” (and its FSD upgrade) in business schools. Turns out you can sustainably push up company valuation on vapourware. You have to wonder if Tesla’s autonomous driving technology was actually ever meant to turn into a product. Or whether it is mostly a tool to justify the lofty Tesla stock price. I very much doubt that it is technologically ahead of its competitors.

But it's... out right now. You can literally use it today.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#83

Post by nomilk »

The article answers the wrong question of 'is FSD perfect?'.

A better question is whether it's 'cost-benefit positive'. That's all that matters when users decide whether or not to use something.

If FSD reduces fatigue and allows you to arrive to work fresher, it might be worth tolerating the odd wrong turn extending the drive time by 2 minutes.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#84

Post by jfoster »

ENGNR wrote: post #70

How does Tesla FSD fair against the Waymo self driving taxis? I'm curious about whether self driving is still an impossible task right now, or if it's just a matter of quality between companies - in which case it's possibly a fair bet being made by Telsa execs that they'll bridge the gap given time and money.

Currently, it's definitely less reliable than Waymo, but is available anywhere in the US or Canada, and is coming to more countries soon.

The other factor is the trajectory of each endeavour. Waymo are gradually adding more cities, and Tesla FSD is gradually getting more reliable.

Both of them are going to be perfectly fine self-driving systems at some point in the future. It's an open question as to when Waymo will be able to scale up substantially, and when Tesla FSD will be reliable enough to operate as a robotaxi service.

You can see lots of videos of both on YouTube to gauge where they're up to. If you find accounts that are focused on each, you can search by oldest videos to see the progress that's been made and extrapolate from there.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#85

Post by rvnx »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #82
hankman86 wrote: post #64

They should teach Tesla’s “autopilot” (and its FSD upgrade) in business schools. Turns out you can sustainably push up company valuation on vapourware. You have to wonder if Tesla’s autonomous driving technology was actually ever meant to turn into a product. Or whether it is mostly a tool to justify the lofty Tesla stock price. I very much doubt that it is technologically ahead of its competitors.

But it's... out right now. You can literally use it today.

And it sort of works in limited cases.

FSD is like ChatGPT, it works in many cases, it does some mistakes, but it is certainly not “useless”. It won’t replace full time humans yet (the same way that ChatGPT does not replace a developer) but can still work in some scenarios.

To the investor, ChatGPT is sold as “AGI is just round the corner”.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#86

Post by erulabs »

seeekr wrote: post #72
erulabs wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around then they rolled out a change that I hate, which was to remove cruise control and replace it with self-driving. Previously “one tap” was cruise, two was self-drive. Now it’s right into self-drive. I assume that increased hours significantly.

They just changed the assignments of what tapping the right stalk once vs twice does -- before, once brought you into cruise control and twice into autopilot. After the change, that order is reversed by default, but you can change that from the settings.

Oh? I only rarely drive my wife’s Tesla but that’s excellent to know, thank you!

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#87

Post by Laremere »

nomilk wrote: post #83

The article answers the wrong question of 'is FSD perfect?'. A better question is whether it's 'cost-benefit positive'. That's all that matters when users decide whether or not to use something. If FSD reduces fatigue and allows you to arrive to work fresher, it might be worth tolerating the odd wrong turn extending the drive time by 2 minutes.

The conclusion addresses your point:

> Without FSD, you pay attention to the road and everything else is within your control. With FSD, you still need to pay attention but now there’s the additional cognitive load to monitor an unpredictable system over which you don’t have direct control.

For the author, FSD is a worse experience in addition to costing a lot of money.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#88

Post by antihipocrat »

nomilk wrote: post #83

The article answers the wrong question of 'is FSD perfect?'. A better question is whether it's 'cost-benefit positive'. That's all that matters when users decide whether or not to use something. If FSD reduces fatigue and allows you to arrive to work fresher, it might be worth tolerating the odd wrong turn extending the drive time by 2 minutes.

The article answered that.. the author experienced increased cognitive load while using FSD, needing to be hyper aware of not only the road conditions but being vigilant and ready to correct mistakes.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#89

Post by bob1029 »

deng wrote: post #54

And please keep in mind that this is pretty much in the optimal settings for FSD: great weather, huge streets, everything is as "car friendly" as it gets. I'd like to see FSD navigating an old Italian city, there's just no way. Even in car-friendly Germany you very often have streets with side-parking, which are too narrow to fit two cars, you need to communicate with oncoming cars, for instance by waving or flashing…

My neighborhood has the effectively one-way street thing going on. FSD would be a total clown show in here. Tesla would have to add some way to determine the velocity of the oncoming traffic around a 90 degree bend while dealing with extremely limited visibility due to seasonal foliage. They would also have to add a way to factor in the historical behavior of these cars over time. For example, I know the guy who drives the blue Tundra is kind of pokey, so I speed up a bit to clear the contention first. The more compelling scenario might be the one where I know the white Mercedes SUV has an extremely aggressive driver, so I'll prefer to wait on them to preserve the peace.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#90

Post by xnx »

ENGNR wrote: post #70

How does Tesla FSD fair against the Waymo self driving taxis? I'm curious about whether self driving is still an impossible task right now, or if it's just a matter of quality between companies - in which case it's possibly a fair bet being made by Telsa execs that they'll bridge the gap given time and money.

Waymo does 50K paid trips per week without a driver behind the wheel. Tesla does zero. Waymo is a business. Tesla FSD is currently just a tech demo.
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