All Tesla owners received a free trial of the company’s Full Self Driving feature to try during the month of April. I posted a little about it when it was first downloaded but what do I think after using it for a month?

When this email landed in my inbox the other day it got me thinking about my impressions and the impact this would have on the world.

Here are the top ten things I learned during the free FSD trial:

• It’s freaky. I mean super freaky. The first hurdle is trusting the car to drive itself. This happened quickly for me but Depends should be standard issue for the first couple of complex intersections of that first drive. Scary stuff. After this, an entirely different level of freakiness enters your mind space. You begin noticing the car doing all the little things a human driver has to do. It's like watching a ghost drive your car. Things like creeping up in an intersection to see around visual obstructions, moving over to drive around debris in the road, or stopping to let a pedestrian cross the street. These human-level decisions were particularly impressive to me. The freakiness subsided after my second drive.

• It’s shockingly good. The latest version of FSD is extremely competent (most of the time). The version of the FSD software I used (V12.3.5) drove the car almost exactly like a human. I only had two instances during the month where I needed to take over the controls during the month-long trial. The first time was when the car mistook a parking lot entry way for a side street that was about a hundred feet further down the road. The second time the car just pulled itself over to the curb for no apparent reason. I just moved the steering wheel slightly on both occasions and it overrode the self driving feature. I didn’t experience any glitches that were even remotely dangerous.

• Not many people know about it. I’m shocked by how few people know about Full Self Driving. Despite having millions of cars on the road, Tesla is still very much like a closed community. A majority of the public isn’t even aware of what the tech in the cars are capable of. Maybe it’s because they don’t advertise?
• It’s not fully trained in all areas/cities so it doesn’t perform the same anywhere. FSD currently performs better in cities where there are more Teslas in use. The AI neural net that Tesla has developed partially relies on data from each individual car to “map” a city. More glitches will occur in areas where FSD hasn’t been used as much.
• FSD has a lead foot. Even though FSD is already 5x safer than a human driver, it takes off pretty aggressively (as you can see from my car insurance’s Drive & Save app). This makes it a little tougher to get comfortable with at first. My acceleration score was in the 90% range before the free trial, now it’s sitting at 56%.

• FUD against Tesla is extremely effective. I’ve seen multiple outright lies about Tesla products, some in once respected mainstream publications, but the public is none-the-wiser. Special interest groups (oil companies, automakers) are relentlessly spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about Teslas and EVs in general in the media. Such a large percentage of the public are taking the bait and have turned against the technology. Now that I’ve experienced FSD in person I know why these special interests are spending so much time and effort on their smear campaigns. This tech is preparing to completely disrupt and upend the entire transportation industry. Many have no idea the extent of what is coming in the next 2-3 years.
• Full Self Driving isn’t for me…yet. I wouldn’t pay the $8k fee or subscribe for $99/month on a regular basis for Full Self Driving. First off, in its current iteration you have to still have your eyes on the road and touch the steering wheel every minute or so or it will disengage. For that price I would want to be able to just relax and have the car drive me without any worries. Even without FSD Teslas have a lot of crash avoidance tech built in so I’m comfortable with this right now. Also, I still enjoy driving, especially the Tesla, but it’s great to know that FSD will be there when I need it.
• The FSD free trial wasn’t just to market the product. The free trial of FSD was mainly to gather as much driver data as possible to make the AI-neural net that drives FSD more competent. As of the end of April 2024, Tesla has racked up 1.3B miles worth of data collected from driving. FSD will be ready for Level 4-5 autonomous driving within the next twelve months or so but then will face the arduous challenges of regulatory approval.
• This tech will be licensed to other automakers. Tesla is already in talks with a couple major automakers about making FSD available on their cars, more will follow suit.

• Autonomous driving will help a lot of people and make the world a safer and more relaxed place. The FSD free trial was a glimpse of a very near future when most cars will be driving themselves. The robotaxi, rendered above, will be unveiled this August and will be released next year. It will be the first vehicle without driver controls. Currently FSD is 5x safer than a human driver but the goal is to get beyond 20x more safe. It will be a Godsend for those with disabilities and the elderly. There will be financial incentives to coax drivers to use autonomous driving first, insurance rates will be discounted and possibly even health insurance premiums (since being in an auto accident is so statistically high). In a decade seeing a human drive their own car will be a rare thing and that time in the car will be viewed as “productive time”, or more likely just more time for people to stare at their phones.

Be well and make the most of this day. Thank you for reading!

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