Just got it this morning, and it will be a good day to test it. I have about 100 miles of driving to do on various types of roads. All of it is on routes that I’m used to using v12 on, so I should have a good sense of anything that is improved.
I am really looking forward to your review. The early adaptors seem to love it.
I’ve completed about 70 of the 100 miles I’ll do today, and it is a big improvement over 12. As I mentioned, 12 behaves like a zoned out human driver who slows down going up hills, changes speed for no reason, makes last minute lane changes to get to the turn lane, etc.
14 behaves like a much more competent human driver. I did not notice the 12 issue of going 8 under the speed limit on an empty freeway. 14 on “standard” is still a bit too slow at reaching terminal speed, but it gets there, and stays there. It seemed to pick lanes using a bit more prediction about upcoming turns, but still not with quite as much forethought as a good human driver.
As long as it knew the correct speed limit, it seemed to do an acceptable job picking the speed. I left it on “standard” the whole time, the rule seems to be something like for a speed limit 45 or under, go up to +5mph over, and for 50 and over go up to +12% over. It also did a better job reducing speed when the speed limit dropped.
It is supposed to do parking to parking self driving, but that is not entirely working. Once I put the car in gear and start backing out of a parking spot, I can hit the self driving button and it will finish pulling out, and then start the route. Pulling into parking spots does not work nearly as well. At work it randomly parked across two spaces and sticking out, and said “I’m done!” Later it made it in between the lines, but at an angle and very close to one. Not sure why it’s so bad, because when I use the parking feature where I tap on a parking space, it backs in (usually) perfectly.
I had at least four forced disengagements in parking lots, because it either was headed down the wrong aisle, or because it wasn’t actually parking, just driving around.
I had two forced disengagements in traffic. The first was because it wanted to cross an intersection when an ambulance with its lights on was coming towards us on the opposite side of the road. That was definitely a mistake on FSD’s part.
The second was just being too timid making an unprotected left out of my work parking lot. It let one gap in traffic go by, and I disengaged and went on the next gap. These weren’t small gaps either, the second was big enough that I gave FSD a second or two to move, and it didn’t.
Standard also seemed a bit timid in other ways. For example, when following a dump truck going 15 under in the right lane, it took about 2 miles to decide to move left and get around it. I’ll try the more aggressive settings soon, but I’m worried those might do things like go 10+ over in the neighborhood.
As for what it did very well, on a rural 2 lane, it passed a bicycle with more caution than most human drivers. We were going up a hill, so couldn’t see oncoming traffic. It slowed down well back from the bicycle, so it wasn’t crowding, and when we got over the hill and could see the road was clear it gave they bicycle plenty of room when going around it.
Thanks for the update. I’ve found that the more aggressive speed settings only apply on highways.
Final update on the state of Tesla FSD v14.lite, unless something interesting happens (or there are questions). Drove 105.33 miles today, 102 on autopilot.
Other than speed, it only broke the law twice! First time was on a double left turn[1], and it crossed from the inside lane to the outside lane during the turn. There were no other cars present, and for all of the double lefts with other cars present it did them correctly.
Second was another illegal left turn. Leaving a parking lot there was both a sign and ground arrow that showed right turns only, but it tried to turn left. I force a disengagement and turned right. I think this was due to the general parking lot confusion I’ve seen. The nav guidance instructed me to turn left on Street A, but I was actually facing Street B.
Standard is a bit too passive. Again it sat on the freeway behind cars or trucks going considerably under the speed limit, when there was a clear left lane for passing. I found switching from standard to hurry would make it pass immediately, but then hurry would settle at 76 in a 65, which is into the ticketable zone on an otherwise lightly trafficked road. Standard would cruise at 69.
I found that bouncing from standard to hurry and then back to standard worked well.
Parking is still weird. It parked perfectly this evening, then later couldn’t manage it. After succesfully pulling head first into my driveway several times, tonight it was too close to the curb to make the necessary tight right between the mailbox and truck, so it tried to back in. I guess good problem solving, but the right answer is to just swing a bit wide. Even when going head in, it won’t pull into the garage, which requires going through a one car sized garage door. It will back out of the garage, which is fun. When i back out manually I got lots of bongs and hootings from the proximity systems.
Verdict is this is definitely not ready to be level 4 eyes-free driving. Even ignoring the parking lot problems, it is still not good enough to leave unattended. However, it really is a remarkable achievement. 8 years ago (on HW2.5, not HW3) it was only traffic aware cruise control and lane keeping. Put whatever numbers you want into the aphorism of “the last 20% of the work takes 80% of the time”, but I think we are close to having just that last difficult part left. Inverting those numbers means we are still decades away, but what I have now is a genuinely useful driving aid.
Oh yeah, not one single instance of phantom braking.
two lanes turn left ↩︎
It’s not good enough to leave completely unattended with HW4 either. I’m glad you have something much better.
I’m sure I said this before but we will probably have completely unattended in certain specific situations soon but maybe over a decade for all cases.
This certainly kicks the can down the road for the HW3 people who paid for lifetime FSD.
Thank you for the detailed report!
I see far too many human drivers make the same mistake.
Another situation that causes human drivers problems is an intersection where three of the four directions stop. Humans often assume it’s an all-way. Any chance to test your Tesla against that?
The closets I’ve experienced so far is making a right turn into a continuous lane where no yielding is necessary. v14 Lite did this successfully several times with no traffic, but the one time there was approaching traffic it yielded, even though that was not necessary. I tap on the accelerator woke it up.
I do frequently go through a three way intersection where only two directions have a stop sign, but unfortunately not this morning.
The one I frequent is an odd setup, in that there are two parallel roads, and a very short connector to get from the main road to the access road. The access road has stop signs in both directions where it meets the connector. Traffic coming off the connector does not have any control.
On v12, if there was no traffic at all, it would slowly move through the intersection without stopping. If there was traffic it would try and stop, and I’ve have to encourage it with the accelerator pedal. This was confusing to all of the cross traffic drivers. There are three types of cross traffic drivers: ones who stop, and know connector traffic will not (the rarest form); ones who stop and think it is an all way/three way stop and glare at me when I proceed without stopping; ones who just ignore the stop sign.
Anyway, that was just a traffic rant because this post where I report nothing wasn’t long enough.
Just today I watched a Waymo move from the inside lane and across the outside lane to get to a right turn only lane. Luckily it turned the blinker on a while before beginning the maneuver and there was no one coming up in the turn-only lane. I was a couple cars behind so I don’t know how much, if any, the driver in the outside lane it cut in front of had to slow down to let it pass.
I did think robo-drivers are acting a little too human.
I saw a sign today that Waymo is coming (has come?) to Miami. If they drive all nice and legal like, they won’t stand a chance.
I wonder how they’ll do here in the land of cocaine, fast, and furious.
The latest Tesla software update, still not released to the masses, has a nice feature. If there’s a route that you take frequently from one place to another and you do it differently than the Navigation suggests, it will give your personal route as a suggestion.
Zoox said that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s decision gives the company federal approval to begin charging for rides, and that it will soon begin charging for service, first in Las Vegas, with additional markets to follow as it completes various state requirements.
[…] NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison told Reuters that Zoox had received clearance to commercially deploy up to 2,500 vehicles in each of the next two years. Zoox currently carries passengers in parts of Las Vegas and San Francisco as part of testing.*
Like, automatically? Or do you have to “record” it
From what I can gather, it will remember it and it will be an option when you choose your route.
It’s called Preferred Routes
I’m not sure what you are describing. There are two lanes that are required to turn left, and it switched from one of them to the other? Don’t you have to shift lanes to get into the left turn lanes at all?
It switched from one lane to the other in the middle of the intersection, while making the turn. Not just changing lanes in the straight part that leads up to the turn.
Imagine as a driver you’re in the outer left turn lane, perhaps because on the new street you’ll soon be turning right. You make a wide turn to endup in the right lane, and the car on your left, that is supposed to be making a tighter turn into the left lane on the new street, turns wide, too, at best cutting you off.
There was an intersection that I took frequently that was at a highway exit where I would make a left onto a main street and then not too long later a right onto a street that led to my neighborhood. Two left turn lanes led to two lanes. I’d take the outer one. If there were cars in both lanes, it would do well. It’s just me, it would go to the inner lane. This was fixed a few revisions ago.
I find v14 lite is still not great at deciding what lane to get in for the turn. This area has lots of double (and sometimes triple) left turn lanes, and it does not seem to pick based on what lane it needs to be in after the turn, or the number of cars in each lane. It appears to be nearly random. Next time through the intersection it might pick the other one.
Oh, i get it now. There are only two intersections i ever use that have multiple lanes to “turn left”, but one really has a left turn lane and a u-turn lane, and both have far too much traffic for anyone to change lanes in the middle of the turn.
Coming home the other evening, Tesla FSD (supervised) v14 lite stopped for a suicidal rabbit.
We were on neighborhood streets near our house, so probably going 20MPH or less.
I should have saved the video. As best I can reconstruct, I was looking down the road, and the rabbit came from the side. My wife warned, “rabbit!” but FSD stopped the car before I reacted, mostly because I was having context issues, and it took me half a second to realize what she meant.
One of my main criticisms of v12 and earlier was that it would ignore road hazards and small animals. Even getting this right once is a big improvement.