45-Minute Tesla Full Self Driving (Supervised) Test Drive — 3 Interventions (VIDEO)
David Havasi and I recorded the following Tesla Full Self Driving (Supervised) test drive a few days ago. It was perhaps the most fascinating one of these weekly test drives we’ve done since FSD version 12.3 rolled out (though, the first one where FSD nailed a bunch of roundabouts was quite exciting). I think it’s best to watch the video in full to get a full, unedited, authentic view of how FSD works. Nonetheless, I’ll summarize a few key points under the video and include timestamps for those moments.
The first notable part of the drive, in my opinion, was at about 19:45, when the car needed to get in the left turn lane — a long lane that it could have slowly and carefully merged into — but was cutting it so close to the curb at a fairly fast speed (39 mph) that I decided I had to quickly disengage. We have heard cases of people getting rim rash with FSD, so there’s a fair chance I would have as well, or maybe I wouldn’t have, but it was too close for comfort and I decided reluctantly that I had to take over.
A few minutes later, at about 24:50, the car needed to cross three lanes of very fast-moving traffic on a highway in order to quickly get into one of the left turn lanes. FSD absolutely nailed it. David and I were shocked, or at least extremely impressed, and we’re pretty sure the car made the move smoother and better than maybe any human would.
At about 35:23, we went into a very odd, tricky 4-way stop with an island in the middle. It’s one of the strangest I’ve ever seen. The car nailed it.
Unfortunately, a minute and a half later, there was a case where the two left lanes bring you onto I-75, we wanted to go straight (and the navigation had us going straight), traffic moves very fast and there’s a lot of it, and FSD basically was going to trap us in the far left lane and potentially put us in a very dangerous situation or force us onto I-75. I tried to let it get us in the correct lane, but couldn’t wait too long and decided I had to disengage.
Lastly, a few minutes later, we were making a left turn off of that same highway to a smaller road that would take us back to the shopping mall where the new Tesla store and service center (and David’s car) are. There are three left turn lanes off of that highway, and we really should have been in the one on the left, but we were put in the one on the right. After making the turn, we needed to move over to one of the lanes on the left, but we didn’t do so before getting up to the light. Interestingly, in this spot, there’s a median that ends up dividing the two left turn lanes from the lanes going straight at the light. FSD decided that even though it was in a lane going straight and there was a thin median with foliage next to us, it would stop at the green light there and try to somehow make an illegal left turn. As it got close to a full stop and with traffic coming up behind me and absolutely not expect me to be stopping there, I decided I had to disengage in order to get the car driving with the flow of traffic again.
Naturally, those are just five highlights (and lowlights) from 45 minutes of Tesla Full Self Driving (Supervised) testing. I do recommend watching the full video for more!
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