Tesla uberbulls often like to say that Tesla is the leader in self-driving because while it doesn’t have a commercially available autonomous ride-hailing service like Waymo, it doesn’t rely on geo-fencing and mapping like Waymo.
They argue that if Tesla wanted to do that it could, but it prefers to focus on an autonomous system that could drive anywhere, anytime, without mapping.
However, it is questionable that they could do it if they wanted to because they still haven’t done it on a project much simpler than Waymo’s operations in Pheonix and other cities: the tunnels under Las Vegas.
The Las Vegas Convention Center Loop is The Boring Company’s first full-scale loop project currently in commercial use.
Elon Musk’s tunneling start-up completed the $50 million project in just over a year.
A Boring Company Loop system consists of tunnels in which Tesla electric vehicles travel at high speeds between stations to transport people within a city. The Boring Company said that it was working with Tesla to use its self-driving system inside those tunnels, which would enables to get rid of the current drivers and lower the cost of operation.
However, 2 years and several more tunnels connected to the Loop later, The Boring Company is still using drivers in the tunnels.
Anyone is free to go to YouTube and see how well the current version of FSD does in traffic. To imply its performance is anything short of amazing in the year 2024 means they’re either uninformed or lying. It’s not flawless and it’s never going to be but it’s quite safe to say it drives much better than the average human driver and when it fails it’s virtually always that it got stuck - not that it caused an accident.
As a heavy FSD user in a car I hate that I own at times I…mostly agree with you. It can take me flawlessly to and from the store or work on a regular basis with a mix of freeway, city streets, unprotected turns, pedestrian activity, etc.
But dear god sometimes it is just dumb. Like getting into the opposite lane of the turn lane it needs to be in now and then bailing on its current route and taking some longer one (I’ve now anticipated when it will happen and will just make it stop, but c’mon).
It’s also safer than a human at times because it drives like a slug going uphill on a hot day. It’ll sometimes stop too long, inch forward too slow, wait too long to go, or whatever. And I get, don’t get me wrong, better safe than sorry, but 1/3rd of the time I just take over because I need to goooo.
edit: What’s confusing to me is if no cars are around, it will not always choose the same behavior in the same exact situation. Most notably the turn into my neighborhood, sometimes it just decides to miss it. Sometimes it decides to route elsewhere first. Then I’m like…yoooo, you were so close and there are no cars, no people, it’s light out, wtf are you doing.