So, the Chattanooga Charge Tesla Owners Club event (in, you guessed it, Chattanooga TN) this past weekend gave me a great opportunity to test out FSD Supervised 13.2.8. And, because my wife wasn't coming with me, I could use it -- she won't let me turn it on if she's in the car, although some exceptions will have to be made at some point.
The goal was to use FSD everywhere, driveway to parking lots. While the goal wasn't quite met, FSD did pretty good overall. But, it still tried to kill me once.
From around 0800 Friday 3/28 to about 2000 Sunday 3/30, total trip distance was 1,234 miles. And FSD did about 99% of that. There were two major interventions and a handful of smaller ones, mainly because it was really being a bit of a jerk in not letting some folks merge in from a chaotic parking lot exit attempt.
The first major intervention was right at the start of my trip, where there's a dog-leg type intersection that routinely confuses it. This time it saw the right turn facing green lights and thought that also meant it was green for the left turns, despite having pretty clear red lights there. No other car was coming so it tried to go, but nope.
The second was due to a combination of things. The biggest issue is still lane changing. Chill mode tries to hug the right lane and only changes to pass; Hurry hugs the left lane and ... also only changes to pass slower cars in the left lane. Standard is where I spend most of my time, but the logic it uses to decide when to change lanes still eludes me.
Around Blacksburg VA, where a few dozen highways (slight exaggeration) try to merge and lanes disappear willy nilly, it put me in the left lane to pass an 18-wheeler that wasn't going quite fast enough. Said left lane was set to end in 1,500 rapidly disappearing feet and the car wasn't doing much to accelerate. So I goosed it to get past the truck while there was still a lane to get past on, and ... went above 85mph. For those that don't know, this really freaks FSD out and puts you in AutoSteer Jail for the remainder of that drive. Luckily there was a rest area about 10 miles away, which gave me the opportunity to park the car, get out, mumble a few more choice words other than what I put in the bug report, get something to drink, stretch my legs, etc. before re-engaging FSD.
Other than that, gotta say, I was impressed. It handled the "local" roads in Chattanooga just fine, which came in handy a few times. The only times I disengaged were to park the car at its destination, as while it may have tried to do that, it was being way too timid if it was going to actually pick a spot and park.
That one instance I mentioned above ref. chaotic parking lot situation was at the Buc-ee's in Sevierville TN. Having a ~ 5 minute delay to wind your way through the chaos to find the SuperChargers, and a ~15+ minute delay just getting out, defeats the purpose of a quick charge, IMHO. FSD can do better in its merge logic, as it didn't seem to ever want to let someone at a stop-sign intersection in, when you aren't at a stop sign yourself. Given that cars were backed up well past any intersection, politeness was mandatory here. What goes around, comes around, especially in traffic circles.
Someone at the event said they use Chill FSD all the time, so I tried it more on the way home. One thing it seems to do is decide to go about 3mph slower than your set limit, which was a bit annoying. And, for all of the highway driving, there were times where it changed lanes and I had no idea why no matter what mode I was in. Sometimes it would move over to let someone behind you who wanted to go faster than you pass, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it would try to change lanes right back to where it came from after you hit the turn signal to get it to change lanes.
But most of the time it was fine, and it really took most of the stress away from those 9.5 hour drive / 11+ hour total time trips. There were a few times where it handled things better than I would have too, since it sees everything and doesn't get distracted.
Of course, Beltway traffic whe I got home was horrible, and the car did great at handling that... but I was still getting angry.
Hope this helps someone who's considering FSD. Note that I had it from 2018 in my Model 3 when it was only $2000 and went to a 2024 Model 3 Highland last year (almost literally one year ago) only because of the FSD license transfer. Even with the mostly positive experience, I would not pay for a perpetual license. Would have subscribed for a month though, for long trips.
