So mainly I’m putting this down for posterity as I know maybe three, four other people may read this and a portion of those might find it useful…
My 2024 Model 3 got the 2026.14.6.6 update last weekend, which gives both the Spring Update and FSD 14.3.3. You can look at the YouTube reviews and other social media channels for 14.3.3 reviews. Some are gushing, some are realistic. I’m more on the “realistic” side.
My main problem with FSD for the past year or two is, it seems like a scam now. This is not what we were promised back in 2018, and the hyping up of its capabilities has basically destroyed any trust from me on any timelines for if and when we’ll get Level 5. Will HW4 even do it? Can’t really say, given HW3 was promised that and now it’s admitted to be not capable with the path they took to do this.
Does FSD 14.3.3 do awesome things? Absolutely. It handles many situations better than I would now. The oft-repeated claim that it’s safer than a human driver is … plausible at least. But it’s not good enough yet to warrant the kind of autonomy human drivers are giving it.
All of this seems to be because it’s scamming Wall Street to get them to keep pouring money into what it might become vs. dealing with serious foundational issues that affect actual owners. By foundational issues I mean things like reading speed limit signs, letting drivers pick the maximum speed limit per profile or at least having more reasonable non-configurable options, being consistent, understanding lane control signs, and not being so stupid with navigation. Now, if Tesla would agree to pay any speeding tickets and all the increased insurance rates that go with it, let alone pay for any actual accidents or loss of life related to them being almost good enough to have humans stop paying attention, fine. That’s what the Robotaxi is for; this is not that. If I’m still responsible for the vehicle’s actions, I should be able to choose driving parameters beyond preset profiles with absurd configurations.
Would be nice if it consistently knew that when I navigate to home “driveway” should be a choice, let alone “garage,” and since it should know there’s a charger here, backing in should be the default behavior.
Issues like “bird braking” and choppy rides due to brake stuttering, those can be fixed and I expect they will be in a future release. How soon? Who knows, that release note of rapid iteration seems to be another false flag to scam Wall Street investors as we certainly haven’t been getting rapid updates.
With that said, I hope it will still do most of the driving to Michigan and back, and it’s certainly done most of the driving to Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Quebec City in prior trips. I doubt I would pay the monthly subscription fee for it, though. Not until it’s actually good at driving vs. scamming Wall Street. (I got the perpetual license back in 2018 and the main reason I upgraded to a 2024 Model 3 is for one of those “one time only” FSD license transfers, plus HW4 and the other improvements.)
These are my thoughts, anyway.
Reinforcing update after having FSD drive 99% of the way up here to Muskegon, MI: Great for most of the time, fails for some common situations that seem pretty basic.
Like reading speed limit signs, especially around construction zones. Or when it does have some indication it’s been read by the speed limit on the screen changing, it totally ignores the speed limit anyway.
There were a lot of construction zones on this trip.
I had hoped the weird handling of 50 & 55 mph zones where it happily drives faster there than in 60 mph zones which it seems to handle correctly was gone, but there weren’t any opportunities before. Plenty of those on this trip too.