Tesla Full Self Driving and Autopilot Differences - Review

[Eric]

In this post I'll review and cover the differences between the Tesla Full Self Driving (FSD) and Autopilot systems, as anyone here knows this has been confusing and the lines are often blurred between the two.

Let's start with Tesla's official documentation on it:

Autopilot​

• Traffic-Aware Cruise Control: Matches the speed of your car to that of the surrounding traffic
• Autosteer: Assists in steering within a clearly marked lane, and uses traffic-aware cruise control

Full Self-Driving Capability​

• Navigate on Autopilot (Beta): Actively guides your car from a highway’s on-ramp to off-ramp, including suggesting lane changes, navigating interchanges, automatically engaging the turn signal and taking the correct exit
• Auto Lane Change: Assists in moving to an adjacent lane on the highway when Autosteer is engaged
• Autopark: Helps automatically parallel or perpendicular park your car, with a single touch
• Summon: Moves your car in and out of a tight space using the mobile app or key
• Smart Summon: Your car will navigate more complex environments and parking spaces, maneuvering around objects as necessary to come find you in a parking lot.
• Traffic and Stop Sign Control (Beta): Identifies stop signs and traffic lights and automatically slows your car to a stop on approach, with your active supervision
• Upcoming:
  • Autosteer on city streets

Personal experience:

Autopilot (free with all Tesla models)

• Reads the lines almost flawlessly, in my experience it has only lost track maybe once or twice since I've owned the car.
• Maintains the lane and stays centered for the most part. Sometimes it rides to the left and can be nerve racking if there is a traffic median but it's never had any real issues with it.
• Once you learn when to disable and re-enable there is a symbiosis with the car that comes naturally.

Purchasing FSD is a total waste of your money

• The current price is $12,000 baked into the car, or $200 per month on a subscription model.
• Having purchased FSD for a month I got some real world experience with it and most of these "features" are things you'll never use.
• The most useful feature is the Auto Lane Change on the freeway, this works well but when traffic is heavy you'll get more penalties than benefits.
• Frequent phantom breaking out of nowhere is jarring, as are all of the false (and loud) alarms. This car is not ready for the capabilities it purports to have, this is also the case with just Autopilot.
• Rather than letting the car drive you, you are babysitting the car.
• Navigate on Autopilot never properly worked with an off ramp, it attempted it but either got the wrong lane or would give a verbal command that this was your exit, yet put you in the wrong lane. At that point I had to fight with the car to take it out of autosteer and it often jerked the car then set off more warnings. This feature is also nowhere near ready for every day drivers and borders on the line of dangerous.

In the end, all you're really going to get for your $12K is the ability to use your blinker while autosteer is enabled, everything else is either novelty or does not work properly yet.

 

[quagmire]

As for keeping to the left of the lane, check the cameras. I thought it liked to keep to the left of the lane, looked at the cameras and it revealed to actually be dead on center of the lane. It revealed how right biased I am.

 

[BigMcGuire]

All the software options came with my used Tesla - didn’t have to pay a penny for them. That said, I don’t like it. I’ve used it several times and prefer just the steering and lane follow - but even that leaves too much room when following in LA traffic. So I turned off auto steering and just used the cruise control following. Well, in a freeway merge, I had it slam on the brakes so hard the person behind me almost slammed into me. So… I just use the cruise control feature now when on almost empty freeways.

Couldn’t stand the constant ”please move steering wheel slightly” requests - I was looking at the monitor more than the road. Lol

Works really well on near empty roads and well marked streets. I have it turned off tho and just use the traffic aware cruise control.

 

[Eric]

As for keeping to the left of the lane, check the cameras. I thought it liked to keep to the left of the lane, looked at the cameras and it revealed to actually be dead on center of the lane. It revealed how right biased I am.

Right, I wondered if it's just the perception from my vantage point, it's a little scary at first (I've even found myself leaning to the right lol) but I've learned to trust it.

 

[Eric]

All the software options came with my used Tesla - didn’t have to pay a penny for them. That said, I don’t like it. I’ve used it several times and prefer just the steering and lane follow - but even that leaves too much room when following in LA traffic. So I turned off auto steering and just used the cruise control following. Well, in a freeway conversion, I had it slam on the brakes so hard the person behind me almost slammed into me. So… I just use the cruise control feature now when on almost empty freeways.

Couldn’t stand the constant ”please move steering wheel slightly” requests - I was looking at the monitor more than the road. Lol

Works really well on near empty roads and well marked streets. I have it turned off tho and just use the traffic aware cruise control.

I've gotten really used to the steering wheel requests and have just trained myself to keep my left hand at about 8 o'clock and rest it there which gives the wheel just enough torque that the nags stop. It's pretty well designed and while it can be frustrating I do understand why it does it.

BTW I have yet to look it up but the cabin camera is definitely monitoring your eyes and knows when you're looking down at your phone. Normally after a period of time it will give the "please move steering wheel slightly” prompt but when you look down it's instant and pulls you right out of it, they're not playing around lol. Moral of that story is don't look down at your phone for any reason and it's another one I can't argue with.

 

[diamond.g]

Summon works fine. (well enough that Ford and Hyundai are copying the feature)
Smart Summon "works" but shouldn't be trusted (as of right now it just uses ultrasonics so it can and will run into things that the ultra sonics miss)
Traffic and Stop sign control work alright. Much better with autosteer on city streets (cause without that feature the car will stop at every traffic light if you do not confirm the okay to go)


Really, everything listed except Traffic and Stop sigh and Autosteer on City Streets was apart of the 5000 EAP package. Then folks complained that they only wanted Lane Centering and TACC, so Tesla listened and switch the prices (AP for 3K the rest of the features for 5K), then folks complained that the 3k was too much so Tesla included AP and upped "FSD" to 7 or 8 grand by itself. And of course from there the price keeps going up (even though it really shouldn't be).