For me it’s seemingly gotten better as I have learned how to use it. As mentioned above, there are times when it needs to be prodded. You should be working with it, not letting it go on its own. Let it do the mundane things and then take over when things get tricky for example
Although comments and critiques from Tesla owners about the latest FSD release are certainly relevant to this thread, ISTM it might be preferable for them to have their own thread, since not all of us are interested in going that far into the weeds on the specifics of one EV make.
I’m not opposed to a thread split. On the other hand, this is a pretty low-activity thread aside from Tesla FSD updates. We’re still a few years away (or more, depending on how one interprets “decades”) from an actual answer to the OP.
That was my same thoughts. But, now that we have Fords, and soon other EVs, crashing into things, it might vary a bit more than just Tesla.
And the reports are generally on-topic. Because every time the persons who use various levels of self driving report that they need to attend to the vehicle at all, it continues to confirm the idea that it’ll be years until there is a self driving car that you can expect to send around unattended without it causing problems.
Not exactly. What matters is the rate at which the interventions decrease, and the nature of those interventions. FSD v12 is a meaningful step forward in both respects. If they can continue the current rate of improvement, then self-driving in a few years is plausible.
Of course, there’s also some wiggle room as to what we consider basic functionality. But the OP did say:
Bolding mine. Excluding the endpoints (i.e., parking), that’s already false. I go many trips with zero interventions. Probably less than 50% at the moment, but it’s significant.
I suppose that’s my cue to make good on the Waymo post I promised a couple of weeks back.
Looking at my trip history, I have taken 85 rides with Waymo since September 7th, 2023, no safety driver for any of them. These are fairly short rides within the city of San Francisco to various appointments or nights out. I’ll describe a couple of minor issues below, but generally it drives like a very safe human driver “should”; meticulously following the rules of the road and very defensive. Occasionally this makes for sudden adjustments when pedestrians step out or cars turn with little space, but I don’t really pay much attention any more. I get in, car goes from point A to point B, and I get out.
The couple of issues:
- On one drive, a tractor trailer was blocking all four lanes of a downtown street while slowly backing into a construction site on the right. My drop-off was just past the construction site on the right, so the Waymo was in the right lane. As the truck backed up and the left lanes freed up, the human drivers merged to the left and went around, but Waymo very patiently waited in the right lane until the truck fully backed out of the right lane. An operator called in halfway through and offered to help, but I just explained the situation and opted to wait. I had a few minutes to spare.
- For pickups, it really doesn’t want to block driveways and my street has a lot of driveways close together. Still, it usually finds a spot a short walk up or down the street. One day, it couldn’t find a spot, so it turns on the nearby street which is a more “major” street with no good places to pull over, so it goes down a quarter mile to the next street, turns, pulls over, and decides that’s a good spot for me to meet the car. I did not have minutes to spare this time, so I jogged/fast walked the quarter mile to catch the car during the 6 minute window before it drives off. I do need (a lot) more exercise, but I was not a happy camper.
My only other wish is that they had more cars available during peak times and generally. The wait times are a bit longer than other ride share services, but I just factor that into my departure time.
One other funny tidbit. After the first couple of rides, you get used to there being no driver, but one night when it was humid out, we got in the car and the windows were completely fogged over. It made no difference to Waymo, of course, but it made for an extra interesting ride for us humans in the back.
Here’s the full quote, which I and others might read as what we have to settle for fora while, rather than anything we’d consider an endpoint.
At best, we’re going to have long haul interstate truck routes that are completely autonomous, with ports on either end where a real person finishes the job. We’ll also see systems like Tesla’s Autopilot proliferate down to more affordable cars, but the law and the technology will still require the driver to remain alert and take over when the system can’t handle the situation, which will be at some point on every single trip the vehicle takes. This is the best we’re going to get for decades.
Excluding the endpoints is a pretty big asterisk. If it can’t park, you must acquit. Or something.
If the car fits*, you must acquit.
*and doesn’t park itself
Thanks. Clearly my inner Cochrane isn’t working 
I’m not that creative, but you lobbed a softball, both the rhyme and the asterisk out!
I’d certainly want to see that improved, but these are private roads/driveways/lots/etc. that it doesn’t (fully) handle yet. From entering to exiting the public road system, I’ve had many zero-intervention drives. I don’t think Waymo handles private roads, either.
Though as I mentioned above, it did park for me automatically… once. And in a handicapped space . But it did do it!
I suspect my garage will be one of the last handled cases. It’s super narrow and the side-view mirrors barely clear the entrance. But if that’s the only thing it can’t handle, I can live with that.
Yep, or really any other exclusion a human could cope with.
What counts as “decades”, anyway? 20 years? Or 10.01?
Tesla FSD parallel parks. People have reported wheel scrapes but that hasn’t happened to me in the few times I have tried.
Tesla FSD backs into spaces in parking lots but only if the spaces are perpendicular to the curb. It can’t do slanted spaces. I don’t think it can do this is something like a dirt parking lot even if there are cars alreadly lined up since it may need the painted lines. This works very well but it can be a bit slow.
That’s more than the OP claimed, though, which is that every trip will require interventions for decades.
At any rate, parking is likely to be a relatively easy problem. Most of the ingredients are there already. As hajaro said, the car can park itself–it just doesn’t pick a space by itself and take it seamlessly.
maybe it predicted that you’d have a stroke within the next 5 min.?
… and it was playing for time 
Thank you for all that. I’m the guy who erroneously said “Tesla’s the only self-driving program with any volume” and triggered your response. Thanks for the thorough correction.
An interesting observation in the immediately previous posts is that parking remains an issue, and the Waymos have the same issue, albeit for a taxicab it’s pick-up / drop-off.
In a dense urban environment, most human taxi pickups are done illegally, where technically the cab is blocking a traffic lane while loading / unloading. I’ts just one of the many “little white moving violations” we all make every day to get around in a city. Figuring out how to automate that and also thread the compliance needle will be hard. We’re each happy with our own little white violations, but we’d take collective outrage at “XYZ Corp’s cars are designed, designed I say, to flout the traffic laws of our fair state!”
not sure about that … in many legislations, taxis are bunched up with other means of public transportation and get some legal leeway and preference (most regulation might be from the stone-age of traffic, where jams were not a thing and probably stayed put due to lobbying of taxi-organizations).
a shallow 30 sec. google-search revealed that in taxis are not allowed (in a given municipal in Chile): … a tomar o dejar pasajeros, en segunda fila … (picking up or dropping off passengers in the second lane) → so i deduce that they are allowed to do that in the first lane (which makes sense, as they need to drop people off in places where there are NO parking places, e.g. in the boonies)
FWIW, Taxis can also legally use bus lanes here in Chile Santiago (but only with paying passenger on board, not “fishing” for passengers).
so - and back on topic - that is an extra layer of complexity for e-taxis, as they - unlike a trad. taxi, where hop-on/off is instant, an e-taxi might have to wait 1 or 5 min for the client to show up.