11 ms·

rode with my friend from San Francisco down to San Diego in his Tesla, and he literally didn't touch the wheel or the pedals the whole time. Then a couple days

rode with my friend from San Francisco down to San Diego in his Tesla, and he literally didn't touch the wheel or the pedals the whole time. Then a couple days later we drove back the same way. People don't talk about these cars driving themselves enough imho

freeAgent 5mo ago
He should have been touching the wheel. Tesla nags you if you don't exert varying force on the wheel, so it's not possible for him to not touch the wheel during the trip unless he was using some sort of defeat device.
- morder 5mo ago
  It barely nags at you if at all. I haven't seen it nag at me in a long time when I take my hand off the wheel. I assume it's because of the camera watching the driver that they allow it but I'm not sure.
- aojdwhsd 5mo ago
  It only nags you if the cabin-facing camera can't tell whether you're keeping your eyes on the road now.
  - andrewinardeer 5mo ago
    Which is why you put a sticker over it.
- ggreer 5mo ago
  That’s no longer true. As long as the car has a cabin camera (which has been the case since the Model 3 came out), it will only nag you if it can’t see your eyes or you’re clearly distracted.
- satvikpendem 5mo ago
  It does for Autosteer but not for FSD, which only requires that you look ahead at the road and if you do so then you don't need to touch the wheel at all.
- olyjohn 5mo ago
  I've had this experience with Subarus. And it's fucking annoying. If the car is tracking where it should go, why do I need to put force on the wheel? It's like I have to keep steering it slightly the wrong way so that it fights back against me just a bit to keep itself in the lane. Otherwise, it thinks my hands aren't on the wheel and bitches the whole time. My hands ARE on the wheel, there's just been zero reason for me to put any turning force on it.
brcmthrowaway 5mo ago
You experienced Time in a Flatcircle
vel0city 5mo ago
I've driven from Dallas to Houston barely having to touch the wheel or pedals the whole way. I don't own a Tesla. Other brands have had self driving features for years now. Some even operate at a higher level of automation.
- satvikpendem 5mo ago
  Which car? Seems like Tesla has the best version although I suppose it depends on the circumstances of the trip.
  - vel0city 5mo ago
    Mustang Mach E. But once again, lots of other cars have similar self driving tech, many better than the Mach E or Teslas. The Bolt I was considering at the time could have also done most of that trip hands-free. And that was actual hands-free, while Teslas at the time required you to take putting torque on the wheel to lie to the system. Even then my 2017 Hyundai did practically everything but steer. Get it on the highway, turn on ACC, and it'll handle the traffic just keep it in the lane. It even did all the stop and go traffic.
    - satvikpendem 5mo ago
      Which ones are better today?
      - kube-system 5mo ago
        A used toyota corolla with comma 4
      - vel0city 5mo ago
        Ones that don't actively try and drive in front of trains in attempt to kill their operators. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMqTmOTtft4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMqTmOTtft4
        5mo ago
hazelnut 5mo ago
Did a trial for a month. It's indeed very impressive but at the same time, it's also very stressful because you don't know how the car is going to react. So I was on constant alert if there were any tricky situations. After some time, it became exhausting and more draining then manual driving.
- twothreeone 5mo ago
  That was my impression as well. You have to babysit the AI the whole time and if you fail to do that it's basically your life (and others' of course) on the line.
  - 6510 5mo ago
    what do you think it is train drivers do?
    - rzzzt 5mo ago
      Doing their absolute best with the steering wheel not to go off those pencil-thin tracks?
    - bloggie 5mo ago
      Should Tesla pay people to use Autopilot?
    - taylodl 5mo ago
      Getting paid to babysit. Tesla asks you to pay to babysit.
    - c0balt 5mo ago
      Run on premade, static tracks with clearly divided "roads" from the rest of road participants. Their role is to stop the train in an emergency and adjust to speed etc. to track/driving conditions. Automating their job probably wouldn't even need the complex ML used for self-driving because the context is significantly simpler and relatively well defined. Maybe a team in city might need such a model but it would still be a significantly simpler task than driving a car.
miltonlost 5mo ago
I feel bad for all the other people on the road your friend endangered
kube-system 5mo ago
It is a great feature, but, ADAS is by definition not self-driving, no matter how capable it is at manipulating the controls. The lowest level of self driving is level 3, where the human is responsible for supervision less than 100% of the time but greater than 0% of the time. Tesla FSD is level 2 and requires the human driver to supervise operations of the ADAS system 100% of the time. https://www.faistgroup.com/site/assets/files/1657/j3016-levels-of-driving-automation-12-10.800x0-is.jpg https://www.faistgroup.com/site/assets/files/1657/j3016-leve... While FSD's manipulation of controls is impressive -- it is missing a very critical component that is required for self driving: the ability to guarantee whether or not it can make a safe decision. Tesla's FSD still offloads this task to the human driver. Once they can do this more than zero percent of the time, they will have achieved level 3.
- marssaxman 5mo ago
  This system sounds worse than useless - automating the easy part of the task, while making the hard part harder.
  - kube-system 5mo ago
    It isn't useless. Like cruise control, you don't need full automation to make driving more comfortable. Hands-off level 2 systems are great for long distance travel. I turn them off when I'm navigating situations that require high levels of decision making, however, e.g. driving through a crowded parking garage.
    - marssaxman 5mo ago
      I suppose that comfort is an individual thing - having to sit in place, staring ahead, watching the road, with nothing to do, sounds to me like a kind of torture. I rarely use cruise control; operating the vehicle is what keeps me engaged enough in the drive that my mind doesn't wander. But cruise control is obviously popular, so there are clearly many people who experience driving differently.
      - 5mo ago
reaperducer 5mo ago
he literally didn't touch the wheel or the pedals the whole time I thought the diver was supposed to keep hands on the wheel in case consuming hits wrong. That's why Tesla fans buy those weighted gizmos to fool the computer into thinking they're still holding the steering wheel.
- iknowstuff 5mo ago
  not anymore as long as you're looking at the road.
darth_avocado 5mo ago
> People don't talk about these cars driving themselves enough imho It’s because driving on the freeway isn’t FSD, it’s a better version of cruise control, and other companies also offer similar capabilities. Within a city, the thing is a shitshow. It does random things all the time and it’s almost a larger cognitive burden on me to constantly be on the lookout for it to make mistake where I have to take over vs me just driving the car myself. For me specifically, it’s just impossible to drive because it fails to recognize curved streets and a couple of other irregularities just within blocks of where I live.
- zwily 5mo ago
  Weird. Works great in cities for me. It’s been more than fancy cruise control for awhile.
  - skinnymuch 5mo ago
    This is HN where people using text files only is the best way to do things and being semi-Luddite is the way. FSD is amazing. Any notion it takes more effort to use it than driving is made up.
- coffeemug 5mo ago
  In a city not only does it do random things, when it does work it’s calibrated so poorly people behind me signal all the time because it’s too slow. On a freeway it’s only kind of usable. It switches lanes far too aggressively and for no reason, to the point that it makes the ride uncomfortable. What I really want is auto steer with lane switching when I signal, which for some reason I could never get working in any mode. It either doesn’t change lanes at all, or changes them arbitrarily of its own volition. And if I change lanes manually it turns off autosteer, which is too irritating to use in practice. Tesla self driving, in any mode, is a bad product. And I say this as a Tesla fan.
- expedition32 5mo ago
  Yeah it's cool if you're driving from Alice Springs to Darwin.
shrubble 5mo ago
I'm literally ready to pay cash for a Tesla, once they make one that doesn't have a steering wheel at all. If I can't go to sleep lying down on the seat as a sole occupant, it's not yet self driving.
- platevoltage 5mo ago
  They announced a Tesla with no steering wheel a while ago. Don't tell me that was vaporware.
bastawhiz 5mo ago
I regularly ride down I-40 and back in North Carolina in my Rivian. I don't touch the wheel from the moment I get on the highway until the moment I get off, pretty much, unless I decide to take a rest stop. The universal hands free is as good or better than what my old Tesla had, and it'll get updates while a 2019 Model 3 almost certainly won't. On the other hand, when I got FSD trials in the model 3 in the last year or so, it never managed to get more than ~a mile without me having to disengage.
Rohansi 5mo ago
The big issue is that Tesla has sold all of their cars with an option for FSD until a month or two ago, but everything before 2023 is basically confirmed never going to actually have FSD because the latest software cannot run on the hardware in the old cars. What's worse is this is all going to end up happening again when HW5 comes out and all of the HW4 cars start getting a trimmed down version of the FSD software from HW5, like HW3 is currently receiving.
- Rohansi 5mo ago
  God bless you dear
outlore 5mo ago
Ehh I made the same trip (HW4, latest update), it’s not particularly impressive. The car gives up under harsh sunlight, tailgates big trucks leading to rock chips, switched lanes without signaling, sometimes would teeter on lane change and then swerve back.
xracy 5mo ago
Yeah, why don't people talk about how my model s tried to drive itself into oncoming traffic more? Not just anyone can drive themself into oncoming traffic. But like, actually the reason is that the cars consistently make dangerous decisions when they're not being used as "glorified cruise control", and the sensors mean they only even get to do that during "perfect driving conditions"

freeAgent 5mo ago

He should have been touching the wheel. Tesla nags you if you don't exert varying force on the wheel, so it's not possible for him to not touch the wheel during the trip unless he was using some sort of defeat device.

morder 5mo ago
It barely nags at you if at all. I haven't seen it nag at me in a long time when I take my hand off the wheel. I assume it's because of the camera watching the driver that they allow it but I'm not sure.
aojdwhsd 5mo ago
It only nags you if the cabin-facing camera can't tell whether you're keeping your eyes on the road now.
- andrewinardeer 5mo ago
  Which is why you put a sticker over it.
ggreer 5mo ago
That’s no longer true. As long as the car has a cabin camera (which has been the case since the Model 3 came out), it will only nag you if it can’t see your eyes or you’re clearly distracted.
satvikpendem 5mo ago
It does for Autosteer but not for FSD, which only requires that you look ahead at the road and if you do so then you don't need to touch the wheel at all.
olyjohn 5mo ago
I've had this experience with Subarus. And it's fucking annoying. If the car is tracking where it should go, why do I need to put force on the wheel? It's like I have to keep steering it slightly the wrong way so that it fights back against me just a bit to keep itself in the lane. Otherwise, it thinks my hands aren't on the wheel and bitches the whole time. My hands ARE on the wheel, there's just been zero reason for me to put any turning force on it.

brcmthrowaway 5mo ago

You experienced Time in a Flatcircle

vel0city 5mo ago

I've driven from Dallas to Houston barely having to touch the wheel or pedals the whole way. I don't own a Tesla. Other brands have had self driving features for years now. Some even operate at a higher level of automation.

satvikpendem 5mo ago
Which car? Seems like Tesla has the best version although I suppose it depends on the circumstances of the trip.
- vel0city 5mo ago
  Mustang Mach E. But once again, lots of other cars have similar self driving tech, many better than the Mach E or Teslas. The Bolt I was considering at the time could have also done most of that trip hands-free. And that was actual hands-free, while Teslas at the time required you to take putting torque on the wheel to lie to the system. Even then my 2017 Hyundai did practically everything but steer. Get it on the highway, turn on ACC, and it'll handle the traffic just keep it in the lane. It even did all the stop and go traffic.
  - satvikpendem 5mo ago
    Which ones are better today?
    - kube-system 5mo ago
      A used toyota corolla with comma 4
    - vel0city 5mo ago
      Ones that don't actively try and drive in front of trains in attempt to kill their operators. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMqTmOTtft4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMqTmOTtft4
      - 5mo ago

hazelnut 5mo ago

Did a trial for a month. It's indeed very impressive but at the same time, it's also very stressful because you don't know how the car is going to react. So I was on constant alert if there were any tricky situations. After some time, it became exhausting and more draining then manual driving.

twothreeone 5mo ago
That was my impression as well. You have to babysit the AI the whole time and if you fail to do that it's basically your life (and others' of course) on the line.
- 6510 5mo ago
  what do you think it is train drivers do?
  - rzzzt 5mo ago
    Doing their absolute best with the steering wheel not to go off those pencil-thin tracks?
  - bloggie 5mo ago
    Should Tesla pay people to use Autopilot?
  - taylodl 5mo ago
    Getting paid to babysit. Tesla asks you to pay to babysit.
  - c0balt 5mo ago
    Run on premade, static tracks with clearly divided "roads" from the rest of road participants. Their role is to stop the train in an emergency and adjust to speed etc. to track/driving conditions. Automating their job probably wouldn't even need the complex ML used for self-driving because the context is significantly simpler and relatively well defined. Maybe a team in city might need such a model but it would still be a significantly simpler task than driving a car.

miltonlost 5mo ago

I feel bad for all the other people on the road your friend endangered

kube-system 5mo ago

It is a great feature, but, ADAS is by definition not self-driving, no matter how capable it is at manipulating the controls. The lowest level of self driving is level 3, where the human is responsible for supervision less than 100% of the time but greater than 0% of the time. Tesla FSD is level 2 and requires the human driver to supervise operations of the ADAS system 100% of the time. https://www.faistgroup.com/site/assets/files/1657/j3016-levels-of-driving-automation-12-10.800x0-is.jpg https://www.faistgroup.com/site/assets/files/1657/j3016-leve... While FSD's manipulation of controls is impressive -- it is missing a very critical component that is required for self driving: the ability to guarantee whether or not it can make a safe decision. Tesla's FSD still offloads this task to the human driver. Once they can do this more than zero percent of the time, they will have achieved level 3.

marssaxman 5mo ago
This system sounds worse than useless - automating the easy part of the task, while making the hard part harder.
- kube-system 5mo ago
  It isn't useless. Like cruise control, you don't need full automation to make driving more comfortable. Hands-off level 2 systems are great for long distance travel. I turn them off when I'm navigating situations that require high levels of decision making, however, e.g. driving through a crowded parking garage.
  - marssaxman 5mo ago
    I suppose that comfort is an individual thing - having to sit in place, staring ahead, watching the road, with nothing to do, sounds to me like a kind of torture. I rarely use cruise control; operating the vehicle is what keeps me engaged enough in the drive that my mind doesn't wander. But cruise control is obviously popular, so there are clearly many people who experience driving differently.
    - 5mo ago

reaperducer 5mo ago

he literally didn't touch the wheel or the pedals the whole time I thought the diver was supposed to keep hands on the wheel in case consuming hits wrong. That's why Tesla fans buy those weighted gizmos to fool the computer into thinking they're still holding the steering wheel.

iknowstuff 5mo ago
not anymore as long as you're looking at the road.

darth_avocado 5mo ago

> People don't talk about these cars driving themselves enough imho It’s because driving on the freeway isn’t FSD, it’s a better version of cruise control, and other companies also offer similar capabilities. Within a city, the thing is a shitshow. It does random things all the time and it’s almost a larger cognitive burden on me to constantly be on the lookout for it to make mistake where I have to take over vs me just driving the car myself. For me specifically, it’s just impossible to drive because it fails to recognize curved streets and a couple of other irregularities just within blocks of where I live.

zwily 5mo ago
Weird. Works great in cities for me. It’s been more than fancy cruise control for awhile.
- skinnymuch 5mo ago
  This is HN where people using text files only is the best way to do things and being semi-Luddite is the way. FSD is amazing. Any notion it takes more effort to use it than driving is made up.
coffeemug 5mo ago
In a city not only does it do random things, when it does work it’s calibrated so poorly people behind me signal all the time because it’s too slow. On a freeway it’s only kind of usable. It switches lanes far too aggressively and for no reason, to the point that it makes the ride uncomfortable. What I really want is auto steer with lane switching when I signal, which for some reason I could never get working in any mode. It either doesn’t change lanes at all, or changes them arbitrarily of its own volition. And if I change lanes manually it turns off autosteer, which is too irritating to use in practice. Tesla self driving, in any mode, is a bad product. And I say this as a Tesla fan.
expedition32 5mo ago
Yeah it's cool if you're driving from Alice Springs to Darwin.

shrubble 5mo ago

I'm literally ready to pay cash for a Tesla, once they make one that doesn't have a steering wheel at all. If I can't go to sleep lying down on the seat as a sole occupant, it's not yet self driving.

platevoltage 5mo ago
They announced a Tesla with no steering wheel a while ago. Don't tell me that was vaporware.

bastawhiz 5mo ago

I regularly ride down I-40 and back in North Carolina in my Rivian. I don't touch the wheel from the moment I get on the highway until the moment I get off, pretty much, unless I decide to take a rest stop. The universal hands free is as good or better than what my old Tesla had, and it'll get updates while a 2019 Model 3 almost certainly won't. On the other hand, when I got FSD trials in the model 3 in the last year or so, it never managed to get more than ~a mile without me having to disengage.

Rohansi 5mo ago

The big issue is that Tesla has sold all of their cars with an option for FSD until a month or two ago, but everything before 2023 is basically confirmed never going to actually have FSD because the latest software cannot run on the hardware in the old cars. What's worse is this is all going to end up happening again when HW5 comes out and all of the HW4 cars start getting a trimmed down version of the FSD software from HW5, like HW3 is currently receiving.

Rohansi 5mo ago
God bless you dear

outlore 5mo ago

Ehh I made the same trip (HW4, latest update), it’s not particularly impressive. The car gives up under harsh sunlight, tailgates big trucks leading to rock chips, switched lanes without signaling, sometimes would teeter on lane change and then swerve back.

xracy 5mo ago

Yeah, why don't people talk about how my model s tried to drive itself into oncoming traffic more? Not just anyone can drive themself into oncoming traffic. But like, actually the reason is that the cars consistently make dangerous decisions when they're not being used as "glorified cruise control", and the sensors mean they only even get to do that during "perfect driving conditions"