[FRC]

Much of our FSD updates are based upon the behavior of the fleet. So, I'm not sure you should expect "courteous".

 

[JasonF]

It resumed going into opposite traffic lane.

I could see exactly what caused that - it thought that the closed street must not actually be where it's supposed to turn, and the driveway just past that was where it was supposed to go.

 

[bwilson4web]

This was a left turn approach. I need to replicate with a straight and right turn approach.

The good news is it appears to have learned to avoid the other end of the construction closure as it now routes on the map correctly.

I suspect it ‘learns’ some local problems as it has for some recently installed speed bumps. Not perfect but less bad than before.

Bob Wilson

 

[Ed Woodrick]

Overall I think the latest version is a step BACK compared to earlier V12 versions.
What is your experience?

Yes, a lot of it is just you. And it appears that you also haven't driven previous versions.

1) in hurry mode, the car goes significantly over the speed limit, around 85 in a 70mph zone.

2) FSD doesn't just follow cars. And yes, it is considered proper to leave enough gap for a car to move into the gap. If you are closer, you are probably illegally following too close.

3) that comes and goes. I just finished over 1000 miles of interstate driving and it was maybe only a couple of miles that it occurred.

4) you are worried about blind spots when you follow too closely?
Get some to grade your driving!

5) hey, it's finally starting to slow down for speed bumps. That in itself makes a lot of people happy.

6) if the car is driving, then why are you trying to back seat tell it what to do?
When FSD goes live, you probably won't have the option.

7) FSD has learned from the billions of miles that people have driven. Nowadays I often find reaching for the turn signal only for FSD to do it before I do.

8) sounds like a current connectivity issue

 

[stefanscheinert]

Yes, a lot of it is just you. And it appears that you also haven't driven previous versions.

1) in hurry mode, the car goes significantly over the speed limit, around 85 in a 70mph zone.

2) FSD doesn't just follow cars. And yes, it is considered proper to leave enough gap for a car to move into the gap. If you are closer, you are probably illegally following too close.

3) that comes and goes. I just finished over 1000 miles of interstate driving and it was maybe only a couple of miles that it occurred.

4) you are worried about blind spots when you follow too closely?
Get some to grade your driving!

5) hey, it's finally starting to slow down for speed bumps. That in itself makes a lot of people happy.

6) if the car is driving, then why are you trying to back seat tell it what to do?
When FSD goes live, you probably won't have the option.

7) FSD has learned from the billions of miles that people have driven. Nowadays I often find reaching for the turn signal only for FSD to do it before I do.

8) sounds like a current connectivity issue

You did not understand my comments:
First I've been using FSD for years now.
1) yes I use hurry mode, but the speed is often BELOW the speed limit. Why?
2) Follow might not the right word; if a car is in front of me FSD keeps initially a distance (so far OK) but when the car in front of me increases the speed, my car will increase the speed much lower; at the end there might be HALF a mile distance while not even keeping up with other cars. This is insane! I would expect that my car keeps only the safety distance but not more.
6) even if I don't do nothing, the car blinks (if it wants to change lanes) and THEN looks; most of the times there is plenty of space, but FSD is overly cautious and does not change the lane. This is confusing to ALL drivers and should not happen

 

[Bigriver]

Overall I think the latest version is a step BACK compared to earlier V12 versions.
What is your experience?

I do not think FSD 12.6.4 is a step backwards. It is a definite improvement for me compared to earlier HW3 versions. However, I agree with a majority of your observations.

1. Speed. Indeed I think maintaining speed on the highway is the #1 problem with HW3.
2. Falling further and further behind a lead car -- yep, this has always been a problem with HW3 FSD. Going notably below my max speed, and not going as fast as the car in front, such that the follow distance gets longer, and longer, and longer. It's very annoying. I do not experience this with HW4, so am confident it will be fixed.
3. Too far to left in lane -- yes, this has been a problem in my model 3 for all versions of FSD 12.6. The problem was introduced with 12.6, and it has gotten better, so I expect it to continue to improve. Note that my HW3 model X on FSD 12.6.* has not had this problem.
4. Driving in someone else's blind spot. Yep, longterm issue. I always give the accelerator a nudge to get out of the situation.
5. Speed bumps -- I don't have that many in my normal driving, so no comment.
6. Hesitating/refusing to change lanes. Yes, a HW3 problem. Not a HW4 problem, so I am confident it will get fixed.
7. Not sure exactly what you are referring to about lane selection.
8. Yeah, voice commands for navigation destination now require you to look at screen and usually scroll to find the right one.

 

[bwilson4web]

Retested the construction block road:

• Left turn approach - hesitates and then drives in the opposing traffic lane to next intersection. Exciting the first time.
• Straight approach - signals a turn even showing original route through blocked street. Signals a safe turn and then remaps route.
• Right turn approach - some hesitancy looking for a way through but eventually through intersection to next right turn.

It sure would be nice if Tesla had some expert programmers to fix this problem.

Bob Wilson

 

[BrianC]

My wife and I recently went on a 3 week road trip to see my elderly parents in March. The trip was great, FSD was not.

Observations:

• Highway driving is in general much smoother, phantom braking did not happen (YAY!). I felt a couple of VERY brief hesitations, but that was all.
  
  
• Lane keeping is so bad. It does stay in its lane, but when there's nothing but straight road and no traffic anywhere close that it needs to pay attention to, it oscillates back and forth within the lane, left and right and its bad enough that it was making me queasy. On long straight stretches with minimal traffic I had to disengage and drive it.
  
  
• Driving modes Chill, Standard and Hurry. I tried them all and the only one that felt like it wasn't out for a Sunday drive was Hurry. I spent 99% of the trip on that setting. To me, Standard is plenty chill. It would ride behind someone in the right lane doing 7mph under the speed limit happily for many miles. Hurry made relatively prompt lane changes and felt like it was confident in what it was doing.
  
  
• Speed limit and maximum speed settings - holy hell. I don't know what Tesla means when that say it will keep up with the flow of traffic, but this was not it. A lot of the trip is 70 and 75mph speed limits, and I would set max speed at 10 over. Whether on a 2 lane rural road without much traffic or on the 75mph highway with plenty of vehicles around, it would insist on finding the speed limit and then slowly slowing down, even in the leftmost lane, even with people approaching from behind. I would watch it drop to 7 or 8 miles below the posted limit and then intervene, accelerating to near my max speed setting, which was usually about the speed everyone was flowing. Over and over it would slow down below the speed limit. This is not safe and wasn't happening on earlier road trips.
  
  
• Lane changes for off-ramps are now earlier and generally better. I would start moving over to take the designated ramp as early as about 1.2 miles prior to the exit, but there were a few times within that range it would want to move left to pass someone.
  
  
• Overtaking a semi scares the hell out of it. Without fail, whether overtaking on the left or on the right, it would slow down to pace the trailer right at the back corner. If I nudged the go pedal it would resume passing it. If I left it to figure it out on its own it would make two or three attempts, hesitate and fall back, and then eventually make the pass. If there's anywhere not to camp out on the highway, its there. I never spend any more time than I need to beside a semi, we've all seen those retread road gators, and I've seen a few when they've come off.
  
  
• City street driving and navigation is improved, but it still makes dumb mistakes. Twice we were navigating to a charger, and it would just go the wrong way. I was always within maybe a 1/4 mile of the chargers. Another time at an stop light with a straight through lane and a a left turn lane when the correct direction was straight through, it would choose to move to the left turn lane as it was coming to a stop, if that stack of cars was shorter. Could be a map error, I don't know. There was a yellow sign indicating what each lane was, but the left turn arrow painted on the pavement was covered by stopped cars so eh, I'll give that one a pass. It is an odd intersection because the left turn lane actually proceeds straight ahead for a good bit, while the "straight" lane actually makes a 45 degree or so right turn.
  
  
• Hands free driving is available but it watches you like a hawk. If you're not facing straight ahead, you get the nag pretty quickly. Seems faster than when just using TACC.
  
  
• Short people need not apply (in certain circumstances). My wife is 5'2". Even with the seat all the way up, the visors are not quite long enough for her when the sun is lower in the sky. When driving into the sun in the evening she could not use FSD because it couldn't see her eyes while she wore sunglasses and a hat didn't work for the same reason. Only viable option was to get more or less blinded by the sun, no hat, no sunglasses. I don't know that there is a viable solution for this. Maybe if the seats vertical adjustment went higher.
  
  
• It still waits way too long to pick up the pace after a traffic slowdown. I had to encourage it with the go pedal every time, unless I like the big stack of cars behind me waiting for me to get my **** together and speed up.
  
  
• School Zones do not exist. No recognition at all, it would plow right through them at whatever its speed was then. SUPER bad. They need to figure this out.
  
  
• Construction zone speed limits are ignored (highway or city driving). I had to manually adjust speed for this. This is acceptable but it really should be detecting them, and if it can't suss out the new speed limit (seems like there's no standard as to what those signs look like, each state seems to do its own thing), at least pop up an alert so you can adjust as needed.
  
  
• Lanes that come to an end are not handled well, if at all. Several times we would be approaching a construction zone while in a lane that was ending and with cars in the lane to the right, bright orange cones to force you over and if I had not intervened we would have plowed right through them. No attempt made to get over. In one instance when there were no cars in the lane to the right of me I let it keep driving until the last second (with my human reaction times at least) and it just keep going. It did somewhat better on right side lanes ending but basically followed the right side line until it was completely merged with the other lane.

My summation would be that even though some things are better, its overall really bad. Between fighting it to maintain a speed reasonable to the flow of traffic to the rhythmic weaving back and forth in the lane when no vehicles were available that it needed to pay attention to, it was more frustrating than useful. You could mostly solve the slowing down issue by setting all the offsets to zero and just using the scroll wheel to adjust things, but then what's the point of having those settings? I suspect that the limitations imposed by HW3 may be the reason for a lot of this. The "dumbing down" of the FSD code is becoming non-viable.

 

[SalisburySam]

Thanks for the details. Quite thorough.

 

[Ed Woodrick]

How long have you been using FSD? Many of the items that you referenced are in release notes with more details.
Chill, standard and hurry are defined and definitely don't act the way you indicate in my HW3 or HW4 vehicles.
In standard mode on my interstate, standard goes about 10% above the speed limit, hurry gets about 15% higher and chill, should go slightly below the limit.
I don't have any issues with the vehicles drifting within their lane, they are rock solid straight.

It sounds as if your semi issues may be related to a fear of yours, expecting a quick pass. The cars pass a semi, just like they do every other vehicle.
You mentioned passing on right, that suggests that you had hurry mode on, it's the only option that will pass on the right. Standard only passes on left and chill seldom, if ever passes.

Navigating to charger? You need to look to see how the map routes you. FSD is only following the route.

I just finished over 1,000 miles of interstate driving and I mostly just sat back and let the car do it's thing.

 

[Bigriver]

@BrianC, thanks for giving us your detailed experiences from your long trip. Most of what you say is in line with what many others are saying in this thread, and my personal experience with HW3. Yeah, maintaining the speed is a big problem. It also seems to sometimes relish staying in another car's blind spot and hanging out in it, especially large trucks, slowing down rather than passing.

A few things I have not experienced:

• Oscillating back and forth within the lane. Have you calibrated the cameras lately?
• Not being able to use FSD with sunglasses on. If it thinks it doesn't have enough info from the internal camera, it should just just revert back to steering wheel nags. Was it instead giving your wife strikes?

I don't agree with your overall assessment that it is really bad, maybe because I am ever aware of how far it has come and I have developed coping mechanisms for most of the short-comings. But I do agree that at this time, these are primarily HW3 limitations. I also have HW4 and it is phenomenal. It can make mistakes, but they aren't the consistent, systemic issues HW3 still has.

 

[Bigriver]

that suggests that you had hurry mode on, it's the only option that will pass on the right. Standard only passes on left

I have had it (try to) pass trucks on the right when in standard mode. I always intervene. These instances were not on highways with so many lanes that there were always cars to the left and right. My experiences have been when there are 3 lanes and it tries to go in the far right lane, which is used by everyone else as the ultra slow lane going up a large hill. It's not meant to be used as a passing lane.

in my HW3 or HW4 vehicles.
In standard mode on my interstate, standard goes about 10% above the speed limit

On interstate without heavy traffic where you can maintain a long-term steady-state, my experience is that HW4 will go within 1 to 2 mph of the max speed defined by the offset. I find the chill/standard/hurry profiles have minimal influence on this. However, with HW3, there really isn't a long-term steady-state speed, as FSD tends to drift down in speed. Hurry does a little better job at reducing the speed drift, but it is still there with 12.6.4 in my experience.

 

[BrianC]

@BrianC, thanks for giving us your detailed experiences from your long trip. Most of what you say is in line with what many others are saying in this thread, and my personal experience with HW3. Yeah, maintaining the speed is a big problem. It also seems to sometimes relish staying in another car's blind spot and hanging out in it, especially large trucks, slowing down rather than passing.

A few things I have not experienced:

• Oscillating back and forth within the lane. Have you calibrated the cameras lately?
• Not being able to use FSD with sunglasses on. If it thinks it doesn't have enough info from the internal camera, it should just just revert back to steering wheel nags. Was it instead giving your wife strikes?

I don't agree with your overall assessment that it is really bad, maybe because I am ever aware of how far it has come and I have developed coping mechanisms for most of the short-comings. But I do agree that at this time, these are primarily HW3 limitations. I also have HW4 and it is phenomenal. It can make mistakes, but they aren't the consistent, systemic issues HW3 still has.

There was someone else here who noticed the weaving, @bwilson4web maybe? Don't remember. As far as the cameras, the windshield was replaced just prior to the trip and calibration was done then. I have just initiated a new calibration a couple days ago so hopefully on our next trip in June it will be better.

With my wife driving, it was forcing her to take over. She had to drive with FSD turned off. After several of those it was threatening a strike if I remember correctly.

HW4 hitting within a mph or two of my set max speed would be perfect. Remember when the word from Tesla was that HW2.5 was going to be able to do the job? I find myself wondering if radar had been kept and they'd used a rain sensor like every one else instead of looking for the raindrops , how much more computational headroom there would be to handle other tasks?

As far as "really bad" my mindset is two-fold. Is it where it needs to be and is it overall better than the last time I used it on a road trip about two years ago? The "PITA factor"(tm) with this version was higher than the version two years ago. That's all. I only subscribe when taking a trip so I don't experience all of the versions in between. I agree it has come a long way generally, but in the end I was VERY frustrated with it by the end of my trip.

 

[Bigriver]

The "PITA factor"(tm) with this version was higher than the version two years ago. That's all.

On the highway, I totally agree with your assessment. HW3 was better 2 years ago. My last long HW3 trip in March I turned off FSD on the highway and used Navigate on Autopilot, which is pretty much a time warp back to 2 years ago.

 

[bwilson4web]

There was someone else here who noticed the weaving, @bwilson4web maybe?

That was over a year ago when it was more severe and reproducible. It was severe enough to cause premature lane changes back and forth.

Today, I see some evidence of 'running on the lane line' and 'weaving into an ending merge lane.' Knowing about the defects, I compensate for it and others easily. But how do newbies learn these tricks?

This is why I think an hour of mentoring makes sense ... for the benefit of newbies. But that is not offered by Tesla and us owners have our own lives to live.

Since I sold my TSLA, I have even less motivation to volunteer. Sure, if asked, I'll go the extra mile but I have lost interest in advocacy. Tesla Owners is where we come to 'trade tricks.'

Bob Wilson

 

[SRothe]

How long have you been using FSD? Many of the items that you referenced are in release notes with more details.
Chill, standard and hurry are defined and definitely don't act the way you indicate in my HW3 or HW4 vehicles.
In standard mode on my interstate, standard goes about 10% above the speed limit, hurry gets about 15% higher and chill, should go slightly below the limit.
I don't have any issues with the vehicles drifting within their lane, they are rock solid straight.

It sounds as if your semi issues may be related to a fear of yours, expecting a quick pass. The cars pass a semi, just like they do every other vehicle.
You mentioned passing on right, that suggests that you had hurry mode on, it's the only option that will pass on the right. Standard only passes on left and chill seldom, if ever passes.

Navigating to charger? You need to look to see how the map routes you. FSD is only following the route.

I just finished over 1,000 miles of interstate driving and I mostly just sat back and let the car do it's thing.

Are you using HW3 and v12.6? I am, and have similar experience as

@BrianC, thanks for giving us your detailed experiences from your long trip. Most of what you say is in line with what many others are saying in this thread, and my personal experience with HW3. Yeah, maintaining the speed is a big problem. It also seems to sometimes relish staying in another car's blind spot and hanging out in it, especially large trucks, slowing down rather than passing.

A few things I have not experienced:

• Oscillating back and forth within the lane. Have you calibrated the cameras lately?
• Not being able to use FSD with sunglasses on. If it thinks it doesn't have enough info from the internal camera, it should just just revert back to steering wheel nags. Was it instead giving your wife strikes?

I don't agree with your overall assessment that it is really bad, maybe because I am ever aware of how far it has come and I have developed coping mechanisms for most of the short-comings. But I do agree that at this time, these are primarily HW3 limitations. I also have HW4 and it is phenomenal. It can make mistakes, but they aren't the consistent, systemic issues HW3 still has.

Ed, we may have coping mechanisms but don't you agree that's a bad thing? Other drivers don't know why I am driving on the centerline, slowing to half the speed limit, aborting a lane change halfway through, swinging back to the original lane and then diving into the new lane, swerving toward them to avoid a pothole that is just a dark spot. This is "really bad" driving. V12.6 was a step back for me, after mostly improvement over the past 5+years. I hope Tesla makes things right.

 

[BillLin]

2025.8.7 with 12.6.4. I just took a relaxing drive through central MA, CT, NY, NJ, DE, and into MD. About 450 miles and I let the kid (FSD) drive most of it. Not bad! The wife didn't know until we were well under way.

No swaying in the lane. No lines crossed. Did very well in 2 lanes merging into 1. Speed was as mentioned by many, but I have a good feel for making it work for me. All driven in chill mode. I let it park a couple of times. Liked the first time, didn't like the steering whipping back and forth for no good reason on the second.

Useful enough for me to use it again in the future. Rented FSD for a month.

 

[BrianC]

2025.8.7 with 12.6.4. I just took a relaxing drive through central MA, CT, NY, NJ, DE, and into MD.

No swaying in the lane. No lines crossed. Did very well in 2 lanes merging into 1.

HW3 or HW4?

 

[BillLin]

HW3, since this is the thread for it. . I couldn't resist. 😁

 

[BrianC]

HW3, since this is the thread for it. . I couldn't resist. 😁

Yep, I can't read. In the words of Bugs Bunny, "What a maroon".