"Gershom Scholem, the foremost authority of our day on Jewish mysticism, heard that the Weizmann Institute at Rehovoth in Israel had completed the building of a new computer, he [said] the most appropriate name for it would be Golem... What follows are Professor Scholem's dedicatory remarks, which were delivered at the Weizmann Institute on June 17, 1965." Very worth a read: https://www.commentary.org/articles/gershom-scholem/the-golem-of-prague-the-golem-of-rehovoth/
Before answering that, I should clarify the history and terminology:
* 2014: Tesla introduces Autopilot (available to actually use the following year)
* 2016: Tesla's infamous "paint it black" video and Elon lying his butt off about how the person in the driver's seat doesn't have to ever do anything with the upcoming version of autopilot (see my recent AGIF, "Fear of Tar Snakes")
* 2018: Famous case, neither the first nor last, of someone believing Musk and getting themself killed
* 2020: Tesla starts to deprecate Autopilot and promotes their new, equally misnamed system called Full Self-Driving (FSD)
* 2023: Big upgrade to the processing power in the cars, enabling smarter AI
* 2025: Robotaxis launch in Austin and later FSD version 14, what I call PFSD (Potentially/Possibly actually Full Self-Driving)
* 2026: Anyone can buy a (new enough, 2024+) Tesla with PFSD
* 2027?: We actually get data proving that it's at least as safe as human drivers when unsupervised?
So to answer the question, I definitely don't use Autopilot or the first thing Tesla called FSD but this new thing, that I call PFSD, yes, it's completely mind-blowing and 200% of the reason I got the car.
I realize how ridiculous it sounds, when you research Tesla's so-called Full Self-Driving and learn what hot garbage it is and people are like "no no, but this *new* version is actually good!" Elon Musk has been delusional and/or lying about this for 12 years. There's a whole Wikipedia page documenting the skulduggery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autonomous_Tesla_vehicles_by_Elon_Musk (And the one green square isn't even quite correct, in my opinion.)
And Tesla fans have been raving about Autopilot and FSD for most of that time as well. There's not a shred of credibility left anywhere.
So, yeah, I realize how it sounds but I really am averring that this new version, 14, is shockingly good. Thousands of miles so far without it trying to kill me a single time. Not that that's enough miles to trust it. Just, well, I don't know. It seems to be finally getting close and it's exciting. If you can hold off another couple years (?) till Waymo tech is available in consumer cars, absolutely do that. If not, I mean, I tried as hard as I possibly could to not end up driving a Tesla, but here we are. There just isn't an alternative. I sure as heck am not driving manually ever again.
"Gershom Scholem, the foremost authority of our day on Jewish mysticism, heard that the Weizmann Institute at Rehovoth in Israel had completed the building of a new computer, he [said] the most appropriate name for it would be Golem... What follows are Professor Scholem's dedicatory remarks, which were delivered at the Weizmann Institute on June 17, 1965." Very worth a read: https://www.commentary.org/articles/gershom-scholem/the-golem-of-prague-the-golem-of-rehovoth/
How much / when do you plan to use Tesla autopilot?
Before answering that, I should clarify the history and terminology:
* 2014: Tesla introduces Autopilot (available to actually use the following year)
* 2016: Tesla's infamous "paint it black" video and Elon lying his butt off about how the person in the driver's seat doesn't have to ever do anything with the upcoming version of autopilot (see my recent AGIF, "Fear of Tar Snakes")
* 2018: Famous case, neither the first nor last, of someone believing Musk and getting themself killed
* 2020: Tesla starts to deprecate Autopilot and promotes their new, equally misnamed system called Full Self-Driving (FSD)
* 2023: Big upgrade to the processing power in the cars, enabling smarter AI
* 2025: Robotaxis launch in Austin and later FSD version 14, what I call PFSD (Potentially/Possibly actually Full Self-Driving)
* 2026: Anyone can buy a (new enough, 2024+) Tesla with PFSD
* 2027?: We actually get data proving that it's at least as safe as human drivers when unsupervised?
So to answer the question, I definitely don't use Autopilot or the first thing Tesla called FSD but this new thing, that I call PFSD, yes, it's completely mind-blowing and 200% of the reason I got the car.
I realize how ridiculous it sounds, when you research Tesla's so-called Full Self-Driving and learn what hot garbage it is and people are like "no no, but this *new* version is actually good!" Elon Musk has been delusional and/or lying about this for 12 years. There's a whole Wikipedia page documenting the skulduggery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autonomous_Tesla_vehicles_by_Elon_Musk (And the one green square isn't even quite correct, in my opinion.)
And Tesla fans have been raving about Autopilot and FSD for most of that time as well. There's not a shred of credibility left anywhere.
So, yeah, I realize how it sounds but I really am averring that this new version, 14, is shockingly good. Thousands of miles so far without it trying to kill me a single time. Not that that's enough miles to trust it. Just, well, I don't know. It seems to be finally getting close and it's exciting. If you can hold off another couple years (?) till Waymo tech is available in consumer cars, absolutely do that. If not, I mean, I tried as hard as I possibly could to not end up driving a Tesla, but here we are. There just isn't an alternative. I sure as heck am not driving manually ever again.