In May 2024 I became the owner of a 2020 Tesla Model 3 Long Range vehicle, and began the learning curve for a Software Defined Vehicle (SDV). If you love apps on your smart phone, then you’ll be attracted to the Tesla experience. I didn’t want to pay Tesla $99.00/month to experience the Full Self Driving (FSD) feature, but just last month Tesla gave owners a 30 day free trial of FSD, so I gave it a try.
The 2020 Tesla chip for FSD is called Hardware 3, with 6 billion transistors in a 14 nm FinFET process from Samsung, delivering 72 TOPS of neural network performance, which sounds quite impressive and an improvement of 7X over the previous generation which used an NVIDIA chip. EDA vendors love selling tools to all of the automotive and AI companies out there using neural networks, because of the large chip sizes and massive design teams required to advanced the state of the art to mimic human reasoning.
On my first FSD trip I pressed the right button on the steering wheel and spoke, “Navigate to Rolling Hills Community Church in Tualatin”. Within a few seconds the map displayed the route, so I selected it, then opened up the garage door, backed out of the driveway, and placed the car in Drive. To enable FSD I pulled the right yoke down twice, and then the FSD driving commenced. My Model 3 drove itself around the first right-hand turn, up a short hill, stopped, then turned left. So far, so good.
Approaching Tualatin Rd the car stopped and waited for traffic coming from the right and left to clear, then it turned onto the two lane road. The vehicle stayed in the center of the lane, noted the speed limit and drove accordingly. It understood the first four traffic lights, and waited until the light was green to proceed. Along Nyberg Street there were two lanes that merged into a single lane, however with FSD it had me in the curb lane and never indicated a left turn signal to merge, so I had to abruptly take manual control, quite the scare.
On the return trip I spoke, “Navigate to Home”, then confirmed the route choice. All was well until there was a right-hand turn planned from Tualatin-Sherwood Road onto SW 90th, where the FSD had me in the number one lane instead of the curb lane to make the turn, so once again I had to take manual control, signal a right turn, and get into the curb lane.
On another FSD trip I was navigating into Lake Oswego, making a right-hand turn onto Lower Boones Ferry Road, when FSD put me into the freeway exit, instead of staying on Lower Boones Ferry Road. I had to manually steer, put on the right blinker and turn into the proper lane.
On that same FSD trip, when I returned on Kruse Way there was a traffic light ahead and I had the Green, yet FSD came to a complete and sudden stop, but thank God there was no car directly behind me, and I had to push the accelerator to get the Tesla moving again.
Still on Kruse Way, my next left-hand turn was to merge onto I5, and FSD waited until the light turned green, but then totally missed the on-ramp metering lights and blew right through a red light.
How about freeway driving? Well, I was on I5 one day in the number one lane, while a semi tractor-trailer was to the right of me. The FSD started to signal a right lane change to go behind the semi, however there was a truck that was tailgating the semi, so I had to take over manually and wait for the truck to safely pass before making a lane change.
In Oregon we also have drizzle, and even under conditions of just 0.01 inches per hour the FSD would warn:
- Full Self-Driving may be degraded, Poor weather detected
Summary
I love my Tesla Model 3, however on every single trip that used FSD I had to manually intervene to save my car from crashing or making an illegal move. Using FSD was not serene or comforting, rather it was very disconcerting that any car maker would be offering such a half-baked driving feature to the public and have the audacity to actually charge money for it. I wouldn’t use FSD even if Tesla paid me $99.00/month, because I value my personal safety over a technology that is not even level 3 of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). Elon Musk has simply over-promised and under-delivered on full self driving, be cautious. The road to level 5 of full autonomy will likely take many years to achieve for Tesla, or any other car company.
