[washbrain]

It's shocking to me that anyone would pay for this. Tesla has been selling fsd since 2014, and nearly a decade later they aren't that much closer.

Between the low reliability, low build quality, and scammy practices, Tesla has turned their lead into a vulnerability.

Once other manufacturers catch up to the battery range, Tesla will have their lunch eaten.

And I say this as someone who has owned a Tesla for over 8 years.

[epgui]

It would seem the market (and more current engineering and design reviews) disagrees with you!

[mlyle]

There are many people who have bought FSD from Tesla, and have had their car reach end of life without ever getting to enjoy FSD.

It's possible after being "less than a year away" for... a decade... that it may be less than a year away now. But it looks like a bit of skepticism has been earned.

[ac29]

Are Teslas really end of life after 8 years? Why such a limited lifespan?

[mlyle]

Original owner tends not to own car for 8 years; FSD "disappears" when you sell the car.

Plus, there's accidents, etc, that weed out a fair bit of the fleet before 8 years.

[epgui]

I don’t think that’s typical.

[washbrain]

The people who buy $100k cars will usually refresh them on the regular, passing the car down to another buyer.

But also, the older Tesla's do not and cannot have the hardware for FSD so they really are EoL in that respect.

[epgui]

I think the skepticism is reasonable, but that’s not really what my comment is about.

[cma]

Are these outside "engineering and design" reviews from a big conflicted youtuber stockholder guy (Sandy Munroe)?

[vardump]

I highly doubt Sandy Munroe's opinion can be bought at any price. He speaks his mind.

[epgui]

Yes, that’s one of them. What evidence do you have that he has a conflict of interest or is a shareholder?

[zz0rr]

I've watched a lot of Munro (and even bought one of their retail reports for fun) and the thing that most bothered me that looked like tesla bias was when he was doing side-by-side stats comparisons of all of the mid-size crossovers like the id.4, mach-e, and tesla y. he kept on harping about the epa range in the comparison and never once mentioned the methodology of the epa estimate and the fact that manufacturers have a lot of leeway to conduct the test themselves - and either overreport or underreport the epa range. this was really glaring to me because tesla is known to stretch their range estimates (as do other manufacturers), but some manufacturers seem to deliberately underreport (mercedes, porsche, ford with some models of the mach-e for example). given that he's in the business of competitive analysis he HAS to know this, but he never said a word about it, which I think made tesla look a little better than it should have. it's one thing to just present the epa range and leave it at that, but he was using it as the basis for a ton of discussion and derived numbers and basically putting down the non-tesla cars... all without mentioning the limits of the number

I think this is the video I'm remembering, but he reused charts like this a lot https://youtu.be/p0kFZ9CVLNg?t=512

see this for some real-world testing, there's lots like it and the results usually skew a certain way for each car. for example, there's about a 20% delta in epa vs. tested range for the tesla y LR and mach-e standard range in his chart. the tesla artificially looks 20% better! and this delta was well-known at the time of his video https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/

to your question about conflicts of interest, owning a stock is a conflict of interest. nobody needs to show that something is happening inside his head, the circumstances exist and that's it. I think he's usually pretty good and I still watch the videos, and he trades on his reputation and I still regard him as a good source. but I'm still glad to learn that he's sold the stock

[cma]

I guess he sold after the conflict of interest criticism. Now his conflict would be in capture to his audience of Tesla megafans.

[olsonjeffery]

Reasonable skepticism based on the facts presented.

[ghostpepper]

It's shocking to me that people are willing to pay to be beta testers for Tesla's entirely-from-scratch manufacturing process and smartphone-with-wheels style of car experience but it doesn't matter what I think - that's the beauty of capitalism.

[abc_lisper]

Rent it for a few days and you will see

[Fatnino]

Renting a tesla for a few days will cost more than I paid for my current car. Admittedly it's 22 years old, but it still does what I need.

[abc_lisper]

Yeah, can’t argue against that. Tesla may not be for everyone, but it’s a damn fine commuter car just because of autopilot.

[Fatnino]

I have driven a friend's model 3 and while yes its nice, I feel like I would get more value for my buck with the driver assist in for example modern Toyotas.

But I'm also perfectly happy driving my decades old Honda so what do I know.

[epgui]

Exactly. I wouldn’t buy FSD myself (I take the bus), but other people would, and I still find the thing’s development immensely fascinating to follow.

[powerhour]

Based on the videos I've seen I'm not even sure I'd call their software beta. It looks like it's in early development, like where you'd be running it exclusively on closed tracks. Definitely nowhere near folks outside the company.

[quantified]

The market considered NFTs highly valuable too, until it didn't.

[epgui]

NFTs don’t have amazing unit economics with gross profit margins of 30% (or any unit economics at all), and incredible discounted cash flows (actually they don’t have any cash flows at all).

It’s like comparing the productivity of a med student on Adderall in a quiet library, and the productivity of a peeled russet potato sitting in the sun.

[darknavi]

> Between the low reliability, low build quality

FWIW we have a 2018 Model 3 and a 2022 Model Y and both have had very minor or no manufacturer issues. Both have never needed anything other than minor, at home service from Tesla (mostly tire swaps).

[ohgodplsno]

A single example does not make for a general rule. Aside from the fact that thank fucking god a less than 1 year old car and a less than 4 year old car should not have some manufacturer issues, Tesla still has a dreadful 226PP100 (as in, each Tesla tested had on average 2.6 problems in a single year), even worse than the industry average (which includes some truly terrible constructors).

[martindbp]

> since 2014, and nearly a decade later they aren't that much closer

That is just an absurd statement. AlexNet came out in 2012 and ResNet in 2015 but somehow Tesla had something "close" to the current FSD in 2014? They're heavily using Transformers now which came out in 2017. They have demonstrated leaps in performance since the first version of FSD Beta two years ago.

[rvz]

> That is just an absurd statement.

No it isn't. It is also not early days either and we have given FSD enough time to meet the claims of achieving Level 5 with those strong and 'confident' deadlines even set by Musk himself, which he knew he couldn't meet, but the gullible customers and fans rushed in and fell for it anyway.

Not only they have all been missed, this year, Tesla finally admitted that it was Level 2 and it still doesn't work in the most dangerous time to drive which is at night. FSD (Fools Self Driving) is no where near close in the nearly ten years it has existed.

This is an obvious over-promising of a broken product with the pied-piper selling it to their fans scam.

[Geee]

Admitted? The difference between L2 and L5 is liability, it is not a metric of how capable the system is.

[rvz]

> Admitted?

Yes. Admitted. [0]

> The difference between L2 and L5 is liability.

Everyone from the regulators to Musk himself have known that for years that it is more than just liability and none of the claims of achieving 'Level 5' FSD and the hype around the robotaxis have ever materialized with many customers falling for the scam lead by the pied piper (Musk) and once again increased prices on a broken product.

[0] https://www.news18.com/news/auto/teslas-full-self-driving-cl...

[Geee]

The driver has to be liable, until the L5 system has lower error-rate than a human. For regulatory and liability reasons, it should be registered as an L2 until it's perfect. No one has ever claimed that FSD is a finished product.

[rvz]

> The driver has to be liable, until the L5 system has lower error-rate than a human.

Which that was promised to be completed in 2020. Where are the Level 5 robotaxis that Elon was confident enough to release by that year?

> For regulatory and liability reasons, it should be registered as an L2 until it's perfect.

And FSD was advertised as Level 5 by Tesla and was due to be complete by 2020 deadline. Even before that, many customers fell for this and were promised that future updates would eventually make it Level 5.

See how the scam works? Not only it was meant to be 'Level 5' as advertised by 2020, Tesla knew that it won't get there all along and continued the deception as their fans bought into the false promise and customers realised that they are paying for a broken contraption that didn't function as advertised and will continue paying for it as the price keeps increasing.

> No one has ever claimed that FSD is a finished product.

Yes. Elon (and Tesla) were the only ones that claimed and promised that it will be finished with robo-taxis on the road, at Level 5 FSD by 2020. This is the pied-piper scam and they have sold a false promise to their loyal fanbase and they will pay for an unfinished product until its 'perfect Level 5 FSD'; whenever that is and will continue to raise prices.

I also don't think it is ok to use unfinished safety critical software on the roads and put many driver's on the roads lives at risk.

[washbrain]

Yeah? It was a toy then, and it's a toy now.

Yes, it's a much better toy, but it's still a toy.

[spoonjim]

> low reliability, low build quality

These are improving at an astonishing rate, like a Web app rather than a car. Yes, this means the first ones were so bad they really shouldn’t have been shipped. But the newer models (of Y especially, X hasn’t been redesigned) are really a different world.

[ohgodplsno]

Hot tip, ship fast and break things doesn't work when you're talking about putting out a 2 ton, gigantic battery out in the world that is expected to last for over 20 years. This is a gigantic waste. Any other company would have been crucified for putting out such a shit car, and the only reason Tesla survived it is because they had funny meme man to do damage control.

[Gud]

You are wrong. Clearly it worked because Tesla is now a highly valued company that produces hundreds of thousands of cars annually.

People put up with the low build quality because at the time Tesla had a unique product not because of some memes.

[spoonjim]

Doesn’t work in what way

[ghostpepper]

Have they fixed the panel gaps and paint issues?

[princevegeta89]

Scammy practices?

[cma]

Solar shingle presentation? Autonomy investor day?

[bufferoverflow]

What are you talking about? I watch FSD progress, and it's clearly getting closer to human level driving. Just go on YouTube and compare FSD from two years ago to the latest. It's night and day. Yes, it still makes mistakes. Humans make mistakes all the time while driving.

As for build quality, we haven't had any major problems with our Model 3. It's a great car.

Tesla has a media problem, where every little problem gets reported as if it's systemic and unfixable.

[kaczordon]

The suspension on the model 3 and Y is definitely not luxury. Nor is the interior build quality. I own a model Y and there’s plenty of creaks and noises in it that other car models don’t have. Also the highway FSD is still ridiculously bad with it’s phantom braking where at 70MPH your car will just slam on the brakes. And highway driving is the easy version that most other manufacturers have now too.

And now it looks like Cruise and Waymo have full self driving in San Francisco which looks amazing. There’s hour long videos of it navigating perfectly and smoothly in a jam packed city. Nothing like the Tesla videos which show it almost slamming into bikes/curbs or just freaking out and stopping in the middle of an intersection.

Has great acceleration though and charging at home is great or on the road with superchargers. But Teslas edge is not as wide anymore.

[abc_lisper]

If phantom braking is reproducible, ie it happens at the same place and time(because sun angle) you should report it to Tesla. Or post a YouTube and link on Twitter. In 15k miles of mostly autopilot, I have had phantom brake happen once or twice. I’m in the Bay Area. It happened when it couldn’t tell wether the shadow of over cross bridge from a physical object. What is your experience?

[ohgodplsno]

>It happened when it couldn’t tell wether the shadow of over cross bridge from a physical object.

Who could have predicted that just relying just on cameras was not a good solution ? Definitely not the hundreds of researchers that told Musk that a LIDAR was necessary.

[abc_lisper]

Idk why people preach this a gospel. There are billions of living things, some of which ( peregrine falcon, cheetah etc)do high way speeds and do fine relying on optics. The only animals that rely on sonar are those that live in the dark. There are insects with pea brains which rely on vision. I’m not saying it is proof that only vision works, but to argue against it requires more than platitudes.

[kaczordon]

They have two eyes close together that do tracking of depth. Plus they have ears and touch, multiple types of sensor synthesis that the Tesla doesn’t even come close to having with a plain old video camera.

[klyrs]

Does it work in rain, snow, and/or night? How about country roads and roads without clearly marked lanes or misleading lane lines?

It's like hiring a plumber who can only flush toilets, not install them. Self driving in pristine conditions is a party trick. Until it can do the hard part, it's nowhere near human-level.

[cma]

At autonomy investor day they were saying better than a human in all human drivable conditions by 2020 for the robotaxi network they said they would launch then. They confirmed they meant level 5 autonomy in answer to a direct question.

They knew dojo wouldn't be online by then and they didn't even really train on video at that point, just trying to judge the scene image by image instead of taking into account prior frames (like knowing someone walked behind a bush 1p frames ago, so that sliver of emerging leg from behind a bush that might not be detectable confidently enough from a single image should be weighted higher).

[Geee]

FSD handles those situations well, compared to Waymo etc, because FSD doesn't depend on pre-mapping. Waymo depends on pre-generated 3D maps and it fails if there's a discrepancy. That's why Waymo works only on small areas and uses cherry-picked routes.

See this example, where the map data is completely wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gTV9SlutU0

[quantified]

Compared to anything else that also doesn't work, ok. But that is not the yardstick to apply, is it?

Does it actually work in the real world is the yardstick to apply.

[enragedcacti]

YouTube can't provide enough information to make a determination about the reliability of a safety critical system. The video that ends up posted could be the best result of multiple attempts and many of the "testers" use hints like pressing the gas pedal or hitting the turn stalk to give the system more confidence in maneuvers that it's otherwise having trouble with. Further, many users who post bad experiences get negative feedback from their audience and sometimes even delete the video and DMCA people who re-host it.

Beyond the problems with YouTube as evidence, its very clear that Tesla isn't operating a proper safety lifecycle as part of the beta and its not clear that their approach and their current hardware is even capable of solving the remaining problems with FSD. Having already sold the hardware as FSD capable, Tesla has created a problem where the hardware drives the validation process of the system, rather than validation process driving the hardware. This is a fundamentally unsafe approach to safety critical systems.

[davewritescode]

The "media problem" is completely earned by Tesla. You know how you avoid bad press? By consistently under-promising while over-delivering and bending over backwards to keep your customers loyal and happy even after they've handed over their money so that when they need a new car they return to you.

German automakers are a great example of this. Whether it's gas or electric they significantly understate the performance and efficiency of their cars while in the real world they always exceed what they've promised.

[salawat]

Until Dieselgate at least.

[davewritescode]

Yeah, was mostly talking about the German luxury automakers which is the market Tesla is trying to compete with most directly.

[the_mitsuhiko]

Maybe it’s getting closer but a lot of people bought this thing for their own cars, never getting access and some already sold the cars again.

[Geee]

> Tesla has a media problem, where every little problem gets reported as if it's systemic and unfixable.

Similar to Apple, people expect more from them than anyone else. Minor issues on Apple products are always scandals. Remember Antennagate? People were sure that it would sink Apple, because "they don't know how to make antennas". People and media handle Tesla similarly, and minor issues are blown out of proportion.

[sudosysgen]

Tesla promised Level 5 autonomy in all conditions by 2020. People paid a lot of money based on that promise.

[Geee]

Yeah, the timeline was over-promised. That's a different issue.

[sudosysgen]

It's the same issue. There is no double standard. Taking advance payment and being 5+ years late is something any company would get massive criticism from, if not sued.