My Model Y was upgraded to FSD v12, which Tesla has been touting as being their best FSD version to date, fixing many issues with prior versions. I recieved the update Friday night, but didn't get to test it out until Sunday. Here are my impressions:

The first thing I noticed was the visualization was highly enhanced. The view that the cameras build is pretty amazing



My first time using it wasn't that great. I set it to aggressive, but if you leave it default, it will follow the speed limit, which nobody but the most annoying of drivers does. Yes, if you follow the speed limit to the "T", you are pissing off a lot of drivers. Sure you may be driving safe, you are unlikely to get a ticket, but everyone around you thinks you are an a hole. Not only that, you are causing unnecessary traffic backup, and you are forcing people to go around you, sometimes in an unsafe manner.

My next drive was much better. I set the speed to 50 mph, and it still drove overly cautious, but at least it kept up with traffic. Any slow drivers, it would go around if I hit the signal. All my passengers (my son, daughter, and two nieces visiting from SoCal) were amazed. FSD guided the car to the proper lanes, handled all the signalling when changing lanes without my intervention.

When we got to our destination which is a busy business park with lots of busy restaurants, the Autopark feature popped up, which worked flawlessly and backed me into a tight spot effortlessly. All my passengers were wowed.

On the way home my wife joined us, switching cars with my son who had to leave a little early. She was completely freaked out watching the car drive itself, from making right turns, to left turns, traffic lights etc. She was especially freaked out when it entered the freeway entrance, which is at a curve. Handled the freeway perfectly, I set the speed to 70 mph and it used the left lane to get around slower vehicles, and moved right to get out of the way of faster driving vehicles. It also handled the off ramp perfectly, which is dangerous because as you are heading for the off ramp cars are entering the freeway from the on ramp, many accidents happen here.

Additional information:

FSD does have you grab the steering wheel and slightly tug on it to make sure you are paying attention, but I notice if you keep your eyes on the road, it does it much less. At times I was talking to my wife and looking at the screen, it would ask me more frequently.

At Right turns if the light is red, it makes a complete stop at the line, then will slowly proceed forward to check traffic before making the turn. It doesn't take any chances, it will only proceed if there are no cars, or oncoming cars are far away.

When there is traffic ahead, it will slow itself way down ahead of time going below the speed limit, even if you have it set higher

I didn't have to make any interventions at all.

Verdict:

All in all, I think it's probably the best self driving car that exists today. It's pretty amazing how far Tesla has come using visuals only. At night it drove just as well and didn't have any issues. I'm just wondering how well it will do in rain, fog, or other conditions that impair vision. I guess time will tell

 

V12 is the first time it was at least able to drive on the local roads near my house, which are pretty tough. The quality was maybe that of a brand new driver so I still wouldn't have engaged it if there was anyone behind me.

Overall I think v12 is the first time in a long time that I've felt there's light at the end of the FSD tunnel

 

I would more classify it as an overcautious driver. I would say give it a few more years

 

I appreciate your thoughts Amirza786.

 

I think that's the root of my gripes. FSD has needed a few more years for a lot of years now. This is how they were marketing FSD 7.5 years ago.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170104....com/autopilot

 

Just speaking for myself, I didn't buy my Tesla with FSD in mind. Completely remove FSD from the picture, and I would have bought my Model Y regardless. If it works perfectly one day, fine. If it doesn't, who cares. FSD is Elon's obsession, not mine 🙂

 

And I appreciate your comments and support @JeffKeryk

 

I plan on winning the lottery and hiring a butler to drive me around anyway.

FSD, pssssh who needs it. Haha

 

I'll just say, if you are someone who "needs" to be in control, FSD is not for you. It takes some getting used to, especially making right or left turns, lane changes etc. It's like an invisible entity is driving...

 

i imagine part of the issue (why it's overcautious) is likely just limitations in compute power. the data models and sensors are there but processing all that in real time to avoid crashes / liability issues is probably a huge challenge.

in a few years i wouldn't be surprised to see hardware on a tesla that is hundreds of times faster and can behave a lot more naturally.

 

FDS FSD made its first blunder. On my way to work I hit a big traffic pocket so turned on FSD. For some reason it changed to a lane that enters the freeway when it should have merged all the way to the left lane. Once it realized it was in the wrong lane, it tried to get out which would have been a disaster, holding up tons of cars, so I had to intervene and continue onto the freeway. Costed me 10 extra minutes

 

Don't get me wrong, if we needed a car to replace our 3 it would probably be a 3 or Y. You get a lot for the money.

This thread is about FSD though, and my attitude on FSD has soured because they promised a lot, took people's money by inferring it was all coming soon, and are still stringing everyone along this many years later. It is what it is, but I'm not going give them a pass for intentionally misleading people.

As far as the actual product, I think the visualizations have improved steadily, while the drive performance has gotten much better in v12. For non-highway use all the previous versions were worthless IMO.

I let it drive back to my house on the "difficult" stretch on a sunny day. It stopped at the low visibility T intersection and crept out until it was confident nobody was coming. Next there's a sort of dog leg along a diagonally intersecting road, also with bad visibility. The only reason there aren't tons of accidents is it's not really a through road so most people using it know how it works. Still see people running stop signs or stopping where there's no sign weekly. Got through that and down the unlined road where autopilot wouldn't even engage a few years ago, so definitely progress.

 

Got it, I understand your frustration, especially for a product that costs $8K

 

^^ agree. The biggest change was when it could take ramps by itself. The local navigation still hasn't reached the same level of competency as even early FSD on the highways.

 

I think they are still good for local compute power, though I don't know for sure anymore. FSD first came out using V2 hardware and when the V3 board came out they had to offer free upgrades to those with FSD purchases. I think they said the V2 was already at 85% capacity and it was something like 5% when running the same stack on the new board.

If I was guessing, I would think the algorithms are still the issue. If you think about your own driving, the decisions you make are based on how much is going on, the visibility due to angles or weather, our experience level, and familiarity with the area. It all factors into how confident we are to pull out, turn, merge, etc.
I'm not familiar with FSD specifically, but in the AI I have used everything you identify or decide has confidence scores with regard to how sure it is that it got the right result. For something like FSD I'm sure there's so many layers of decisions that need to converge onto a choice with enough overall confidence to take action.