Tesla FSD vs 25MPH, Well Marked, Curvy Road

Intro

All right folks we are back at Bear Creek Lake Park. Our vehicle of choice for today’s test is a Tesla Model 3 LR (long range) AWD (all-wheel drive) with the FSD (full self-driving) computer + full self driving capability. We are running software that is up to date for the standard software release (this is not the advanced software update preferences) as of August 4, 2022: FSD Beta 10.12.2.

The first test we’ll do will just be with basic autopilot. We’ll see if there’s been any improvement over my previous post that I recorded ~10 months ago which is when… spoiler alert: my Tesla DROVE IN THE WRONG LANE!

After that, I will enable full self-driving (beta) and we will see if it performs any better.

Note that I’m on my last strike with my FSD beta account! I currently have 4/5 strikes, largely due to my Turo renters. I saved my last strike for you guys 🥴

UPDATE: My strikes have since been reset (a few times) 🙏 Thank you almighty Elon!

TL;DR

• Previous post from ~10 months ago here. This is autopilot only and before FSD-beta was released.
• Autopilot performs slightly better than it previously did
  • It does not drive in the oncoming traffic’s lane, but it also goes halfway over the double yellow line into the oncoming traffic’s lane
  • I give it a D+
• FSD performs acceptable
  • The s-curve is so sharp that it momentarily puts its turn signal on, thinking that the s-curve is a completely different road! 😆
  • It does not go over the double yellow line
  • Its braking seems reactive instead of proactive, braking in the middle of the turn instead of beforehand
  • I give it a C+

Autopilot Repeat Test

It initially seems much more in control compared to what I remember, but we’ll see about that…

In the S-curve where we went into the other lane previously, this time the car somewhat stayed directly over the middle line… Better than previous but definitely was halfway into the other lane.

What turned out to be a great start ended up being… just that. A great start. It still has some work to do. I give it a D+. Let’s turn around and try it going the other way

Similar story going the other way, autopilot came in too fast for the corner. I’m not seeing a whole lot of improvement.

Enough of autopilot, time to let FSD take a crack at it!

FSD Take 1

I think it’s going to do a little bit better because I don’t think they’re doing much development on autopilot. I think they’re really spending a lot of their time on the “FSD stack”. Those are technically two separate things right now. So, I’m hoping FSD does better than what autopilot did… It’d be tough to do worse!! I’d like to see it just slow down when making these turns. If it slows down, and still goes across the lines, I think that’s better than staying at 25mph the whole time. It would show that FSD is doing some path prediction and calculating the speed given the angle of turns. We shall see. Buckle up!

Coming up to the S-curve, FSD initially put the turn signal on! It thought the turn was so sharp that it was basically a different road! When making the S-curve, it didn’t preemptively slow down, but it did slow down during the turn to 18mph, which was a welcome change! That was much better! Very encouraging!

Verdict: Not great but definitely acceptable.

FSD Take 2

I tried to let FSD take us out of the parking lot but as soon as it pulled out of my parking space, warnings were everywhere asking me to take control…

I backed up and again tried to let FSD take us out of the parking lot but it was driving through the parking lot like a space ship so I took control… I’ll just drive to get us on the road haha.

Approaching the S-curve… it again put the turn signal on! But only briefly (two blinks). It largely behaved just as it did for the previous trip.

I would like to see it brake a little bit earlier so that it can go into the turns a little bit slower, but overall it’s not too bad.

Return trip to Soda Lake

I tried to let FSD take us out of this unmarked parking lot, but it wouldn’t even engage.

Again, it came into the turns a little bit fast, but slowed down during the turns.

There was a car that was pulled over taking a picture, and it didn’t look like they thought we were too crazy of a driver! So I guess it passed the “bystander test” 😬

FSD Take 3

** GoPro HERO 9 overheats in a climate controlled car **

FSD Take 4

Another car was coming right as we were entering the S-curve so I had to put the kibosh to this test to prevent a catastrophe 😅

Outro

So… that will be a wrap for now. We were running short on daylight anyway and I think two attempts are plenty to see how FSD performs. If I can hang on to my final FSD strike or if the strikes get reset (spoiler: they got reset), I’ll be back here to test out the next small steps and/or giant leaps for FSD.

However, at the rate that I’m publishing videos, we might just have full FSD public by then 🤪 (that’s a joke)

But while that is a joke, it is still exciting to see how it progresses and improves over time.

Thanks for watching. I look forward to publishing more Tesla videos in the future.