For many Tesla owners and fans, the deceptively named Full Self-Driving (FSD) system that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has promised is a very exciting and desirable thing. It’s also a $ 10,000 option, of course, and not everyone just has those kinds of scratches hanging out. However, benevolent Elon has a solution for you: Yyou can pay for it subscription starts early next year! Hot damn! Too bad it is not really “fully self-propelled”.
Here’s Elon’s answer to a tweeted question that revealed the plan:
Okay, so Tesla leasers can pay monthly for FSD early next year, and then they don’t have to drop $ 10,000 for a system that’s yet to be released, instead they just pay $ 100 or more per month for a system that’s are already being released.
And it’s worth mentioning that while what we’ve seen of the FSD’s capabilities is very impressive, with exciting videos from Tesla showing it off, like this one:
… it is in no way a level 5 autonomous system and will remain a level 2 semi-autonomous system, however skilled it is. Why is that? Well, I’ll let it Tesla explains it in their own words (emphasis mine):
Autopilot and Full self-driving capability is intended for use with a fully observant driver, who has his hands on the wheel and is willing to take over at any time. While these features are designed to get better over time, the currently enabled features do not make the vehicle autonomous.
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See that? It does an awful lot of driving on its own, no question about it, but, like any level 2 system, it requires the driver to be ready to take over without any notice, at any time. This means that if you want an autonomous vehicle so you can sleep or watch movies or take a brain teaser or just don’t pay attention to the driving, you’re out of luck, because FSD will not do that for you.
Tesla is well aware of this, of course, and they say the same thing over and over in various sections about Autopilot and FSD:
The functions currently enabled require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous. The activation and use of these features is dependent on achieving reliability far beyond human drivers, as evidenced by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions. As these self-driving functions evolve, your car will be continuously upgraded via over-the-air software updates.
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Before engaging Autopilot, the driver must agree to “keep your hands on the wheel at all times” and always “to maintain control and responsibility for your vehicle”. Each time the driver engages the Autopilot, a visual reminder is then displayed to “keep your hands on the wheel”.
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As with all Autopilot features, you must be in control of your vehicle, pay attention to its surroundings, and be ready to take immediate action, including braking. This feature is in beta and may not end for all traffic checks. While Traffic and Stop Sign Control is enabled on surface streets with Autosteer active, your speed will be limited to the specified limit. Refer to the owner’s manual for additional information, instructions for use, and warnings.
This brings us to the inherent problems with Level 2 systems: people don’t work well with them. This is not a technical problem, it is a conceptual problem, and it is not just me who thinks that.
The additional capabilities of FSD will add to the problems we’ve seen in humans to sleep or watching movies or do not pay attention because their Tesla’s Autopilot works most of work much worse because the car can now do even more – until it can’t.
Without any kind of redundancy in its camera dependent (as in, No LiDARFSD hardware, anything from a mud pool to a swarm of insects to ice or snow to bird droppings can completely disable the car’s driveability, then it will ask the person behind the wheel to take it over, possibly at highway speeds, with no awareness if the person inside is even awake.
All this effort put into figuring out how to better drive a car under human supervision is pointless for the purpose of full autonomy without a reasonable plan on how to deal with failovers and handovers to the human driver.
Truly, the effort put into the impressive spectrum of FSD capabilities would have been better spent figuring out how to deal with safe failovers, but I’m not surprised it didn’t work out that way, because safe failovers aren’t just sexy, but they inherently handle the flaws in these autonomous systems, and that’s bad for marketing.
But until a self-driving car can get out of the way safely when its capabilities are compromised, we’re all stuck at level 2, no matter how complete that level 2 system is.
Figuring out how to safely handle a car with compromised sensors or cameras is by no means an easy task. How should it navigate if it can no longer see? Should it communicate its disturbed condition to nearby vehicles, request information about the immediate area, or at least warn them to stay clear?
Could be. But that would require industry-wide standards and collaboration, and we also know how car manufacturers are sucking on that.
Tesla’s FSD is dangerous, period, because it is a level 2 system that requires human vigilance while doing everything it can to convince humans not to be vigilant. It’s inherent, conceptually flawed, and any Tesla stan about to tell me how advanced the technology is and how good it is and how I’m the one who kills thousands of people for getting in the way of Elon’s Golden Path. fuck right away.
Tesla’s FSD, whether you pay for it monthly or by dropping a suitcase full of $ 20 on the desk of a Tesla store, is a problem. The best they can do is use development tools to figure out how to cross the level 2 barrier and create a system that is actually capable of safe failovers and transfers.
As soon as humans are not always paying attention and ready to take action, these systems can really start doing something good. Until then, it’s just a flashy, dangerous tech guy who doesn’t help anyone.
So yes, you can pay for this monthly in 2021 if you want. Bravo.