Tesla Owners Flood Twitter Thread To Claim They Are “Full Self Driving” Ready

4 years ago Zachary Shahan 0 Comments
Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

On Monday, I wrote an article trying to summarize and put in order various updates from Tesla/Elon Musk regarding the coming Tesla Autopilot update, which is basically the rollout of the remainder of the Full Self Driving (FSD) package. I’ll try to explain that package a little further on the bottom of this piece since it’s actually something we seldom explain in detail, and since some people are new to this topic every day. The primary purpose of this article, though, is simply to laugh at the flood of responses that followed after Elon responded to my article with this statement: “Limited FSD beta releasing on Tuesday next week, as promised. This will, at first, be limited to a small number of people who are expert & careful drivers.”

Clearly, many Tesla owners are eager for the FSD features. The cost today to purchase the package is $8,000. I paid $6,000 a little more than a year ago for it when buying our Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus. I’ve gotten some awesome new features since purchasing it (hence Tesla’s justification for two $1,000 price increases in that time), but there’s no doubt about it: I and many others are practically drooling thinking about door-to-door (or parking space–to–parking space) FSD capability, and most of us want to get the update as soon as possible. So, when Elon said “a small number of people who are expert & careful drivers” would get first dibs, claims of nearly perfect driving (and other things) rolled in. Here are my favorites:

https://twitter.com/future_yas/status/1315626077968986112

“I need to do more meaningful things in my life.”

😀 😀 😀

https://twitter.com/MaxMDFRCSC/status/1315622348578533381

Those last couple look pretty convincing.

The somewhat confusing thing about Tesla Full Self Driving for longtime followers and owners is that some features have been shuffled around between simple “Autopilot,” “Enhanced Autopilot,” and “Full Self Driving” over the years. The other thing that can be confusing is that whether you have the basic “Autopilot” package or the “Full Self Driving” package, what you do while driving in order to use the features is simply turn on Autopilot.

However, if ordering a new Tesla, the details are super clear. If you don’t buy the “Full Self Driving,” you can get autosteer and what is more widely known as adaptive cruise control. If you do buy the “Full Self Driving” package, you get these extra features:

  • Auto Lane Change: automatic lane changes while driving on the highway.
  • Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control: assisted stops at traffic controlled intersections.
  • Autopark: both parallel and perpendicular spaces.
  • Navigate on Autopilot: automatic driving from highway on-ramp to off-ramp including interchanges and overtaking slower cars. (Yes, this really works.)
  • Summon: your parked car will come find you anywhere in a parking lot. Really.

Additionally, under an “Upcoming” subheading, it’s noted that you will eventually get “Autosteer on city streets.”

I presume the coming update will allow your car to turn by itself, but that’s actually not certain. That feature, as well as the car automatically avoiding potholes and navigating parking lots on its own, will be implemented at some point, but we don’t know the actual timeframe for specific features. I think avoiding potholes and auto-navigating parking lots will come much later (maybe months later), but I do expect the next software update to include the ability to put a destination into your navigation and then closely supervise your car as it drives there on all public roads, even taking turns on its own as needed if the intersection/turn is not too challenging.

What “Full Self Driving” can not do yet, which will take a lot longer, is drive by itself without supervision. Even if you are driving with Autopilot every day and it does great, it needs close human supervision. There are edged cases where it will make the wrong decision, or where it will not realize it needs to make a decision at all, and your human eyes and brain will need to be on the road with hands and feet ready to take over.

Of course, I haven’t tested out the much improved new FSD capability, so I don’t know yet if it will seem like a minor, incremental improvement over today’s Autopilot, or if it will feel like dramatic, revolutionary step change. But everything I’m seeing from Elon Musk on this topic implies to me that cars with FSD will get their day in the sun soon and will surprise many a fan and many a critic with their capability. We’ll see.

Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica.TV Video

Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

Zachary Shahan has 7379 posts and counting. See all posts by Zachary Shahan