Elon Musk admits other automakers don't want Tesla's over-hyped FSD software

[sreams]

For Waymo you pay for the massive array sensors not the computer.

Waymo has 5 lidars, 29 cameras and 6 radars. A tesla has just 8-9 cameras. You can understand why Waymo is charging a lot (with a single Lidar being about 1000$), but you cannot make the same argument for a tesla.

Without Lidar or at least Radar sensors, Tesla will never reach level 5. It's a pipe dream that that they sell to gullible people.

And Waymo released many white/research papers that others can study and use.

You still haven't shown the cost of the Waymo computer. Saying what you pay for is "not the computer" doesn't make it so.

 

[acrossthestars]

Not having LiDAR support, as many commenters here have pointed out, is no doubt about cost-cutting. But, it's also about "universality". LiDAR systems use LiDAR, but a system with "computer vision" has broad application beyond being in an automobile. The upfront costs are equal parts massive, because of the need for huge databases of environmental and variable data, and fixed, because once 99% of the variability is accounted for and the systems are sufficiently miniaturized, then you don't need the expensve LiDAR depth sensor system AND you can use it in anything with a camera.

I doubt the Optimus robot line would be possible or even practical if Tesla had started with LiDAR instead of spending the last decade developing computer vision models using regular camera sensors.

 

[Puiu]

You still haven't shown the cost of the Waymo computer. Saying what you pay for is "not the computer" doesn't make it so.

I don't need to show you anything from Waymo. All I need to do is show you that Tesla itself is expensive for what it offers. Nothing more, nothing less.

Furthermore, now Tesla is telling you that you need to upgrade your computer for further FSD updates to version 4. HW1 came out in 2014 and people paid for it and its upgrades Pffffff hahaha

 

[sreams]

I don't need to show you anything from Waymo. All I need to do is show you that Tesla itself is expensive for what it offers. Nothing more, nothing less.

Furthermore, now Tesla is telling you that you need to upgrade your computer for further FSD updates to version 4. HW1 came out in 2014 and people paid for it and its upgrades Pffffff hahaha

Your words:

"Nobody wants a system that requires an expensive computer"

So... which system is it that doesn't require one? Or is it your suggestion that nobody wants any of these systems?

 

[acrossthestars]

Furthermore, now Tesla is telling you that you need to upgrade your computer for further FSD updates to version 4. HW1 came out in 2014 and people paid for it and its upgrades

So, Apparently, Tesla is now being sued over its repeated, now provably-false claims about its ability to deliver FSD or even which vehicles are compatible with it.
From Electrotek "Tesla claimed that all vehicles built since 2016 have the hardware capable of achieving “full self-driving”, which isn’t the case, and Tesla has been selling a software package called “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) that it claimed would deliver unsupervised level 4-5 self-driving, and it hasn’t."

When they upgrade the computer, are they also going to rewire the car and replace all of the existing camera sensors or just make do? Because if they simply upgrade the onboard logic, but don't also upgrade the camera array, something tells me that 2014 technology doesn't cut it. If they have to rewire the whole car, in order to make it compatible with autonomous driving, wouldn't it be cheaper to just get a new vehicle?

Unless in-place upgrades are cheaper than getting a new vehicle, the whole situation is just bungled from top to bottom.

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

On the subject, none of this can adequately compensate for rain, snow, etc. The human brain can use you eyes and put together images that have never been seen before. Training can't adequately cover it, and lidar and radar are blind in such conditions. AI to the rescue?????

P.S. Good to see the forums cleaned up a bit. Thank ;you.

It looks like FSD can drive in the snow, although this is a first attempt to do so and there was a minor issue at the end. It's able to handle snowy conditions just fine, although for a completely snowed-over parking lot it struggled. At one point it drove over a curb very slowly:

I don't need to show you anything from Waymo. All I need to do is show you that Tesla itself is expensive for what it offers. Nothing more, nothing less.

Furthermore, now Tesla is telling you that you need to upgrade your computer for further FSD updates to version 4. HW1 came out in 2014 and people paid for it and its upgrades Pffffff hahaha

When they upgrade the computer, are they also going to rewire the car and replace all of the existing camera sensors or just make do? Because if they simply upgrade the onboard logic, but don't also upgrade the camera array, something tells me that 2014 technology doesn't cut it. If they have to rewire the whole car, in order to make it compatible with autonomous driving, wouldn't it be cheaper to just get a new vehicle?

Unless in-place upgrades are cheaper than getting a new vehicle, the whole situation is just bungled from top to bottom.

HW1 was free. I know someone who had it installed in their vehicle before it was officially announced, and I got Autopilot by only paying for the tech package (which included much more than Autopilot). HW1 was never supposed to receive FSD and there is no upgrade path for it.

HW2 did allow you to buy FSD, and those who bought it when they bought the car got a free upgrade. HW3 is still supported, although its updates come at a delay over HW4. They announced that they should receive the latest V14 update in about 6 months. Tesla has already announced when FSD is feature-complete, FSD HW3 owners would receive a free hardware retrofit if it's needed.

Furthermore, Tesla has allowed its customers many times to transfer FSD to a new vehicle if they paid for FSD when it hasn't been completed yet. This allows its customers to avoid any delays or retrofits for FSD on older hardware entirely: https://www.tesla.com/support/fsd-transfer

 

[SRB]

It looks like FSD can drive in the snow, although this is a first attempt to do so and there was a minor issue at the end. It's able to handle snowy conditions just fine, although for a completely snowed-over parking lot it struggled. At one point it drove over a curb very slowly:

HW1 was free. I know someone who had it installed in their vehicle before it was officially announced, and I got Autopilot by only paying for the tech package (which included much more than Autopilot). HW1 was never supposed to receive FSD and there is no upgrade path for it.

HW2 did allow you to buy FSD, and those who bought it when they bought the car got a free upgrade. HW3 is still supported, although its updates come at a delay over HW4. They announced that they should receive the latest V14 update in about 6 months. Tesla has already announced when FSD is feature-complete, FSD HW3 owners would receive a free hardware retrofit if it's needed.

Furthermore, Tesla has allowed its customers many times to transfer FSD to a new vehicle if they paid for FSD when it hasn't been completed yet. This allows its customers to avoid any delays or retrofits for FSD on older hardware entirely: https://www.tesla.com/support/fsd-transfer

I wasn't talking about after it snows......moderate to heavy rain and snow scatter the laser light/radar signals, shortening the range dramatically. AI cameras aren't much better.

 

[Puiu]

It looks like FSD can drive in the snow, although this is a first attempt to do so and there was a minor issue at the end. It's able to handle snowy conditions just fine, although for a completely snowed-over parking lot it struggled. At one point it drove over a curb very slowly:

HW1 was free. I know someone who had it installed in their vehicle before it was officially announced, and I got Autopilot by only paying for the tech package (which included much more than Autopilot). HW1 was never supposed to receive FSD and there is no upgrade path for it.

HW2 did allow you to buy FSD, and those who bought it when they bought the car got a free upgrade. HW3 is still supported, although its updates come at a delay over HW4. They announced that they should receive the latest V14 update in about 6 months. Tesla has already announced when FSD is feature-complete, FSD HW3 owners would receive a free hardware retrofit if it's needed.

Furthermore, Tesla has allowed its customers many times to transfer FSD to a new vehicle if they paid for FSD when it hasn't been completed yet. This allows its customers to avoid any delays or retrofits for FSD on older hardware entirely: https://www.tesla.com/support/fsd-transfer

Nothing was free. You paid for it when you bought the car.

"It's able to handle snowy conditions just fine" - it didn't look fine to me and controlled conditions are not the problem. You know exactly just how chaotic driving on some roads can be, especially in bad weather conditions. You cannot and should not trust a system with only optical sensors. It's just insane.

"HW3 is still supported, although its updates come at a delay over HW4" - just like how windows 10 still received some critical updates for a while. it doesn't change the end result and what was promised that HW3 would be able to do.

"Furthermore, Tesla has allowed its customers many times to transfer FSD to a new vehicle if they paid for FSD when it hasn't been completed yet." - and? you are still forced to upgrade AFTER they promised multiple times that this will be the "hardware to rule all hardware" (/s)

 

[wiyosaya]

Well you don’t need your hands on the steering wheel at all, you just need to pay attention. There are now thousands of videos online of people putting in a destination, tapping “Start Self-Driving”, and doing nothing until the car parks itself at the destination. Drivers aren’t touching any controls at all. It’s not perfect yet, but it certainly appears to be getting closer with each software update.

Here are just 3 examples of the first results on YouTube uploaded today (multiple FSD drives each, no human driving). I could find only one case where FSD told the driver to take over briefly (who just re-enabled FSD), and no other interventions in any of these:

Yup. A few posts from nobodies on YouTube definitely prove Tesla's FSD V14 works.

Keep drinking the Cool-Aid.

 

[wiyosaya]

For now. The big safety limitation when FSD causes a collision appears to be limited to very low speeds where precision is needed while navigating around objects. FSD could very easily become a level 3 driving assistant where the vast majority of the time you don’t need to pay any attention until it asks you to monitor while parking. I’d guess that happens in the next year sometime. But for now, it needs you to be looking at the road and it will nag you if you look at elsewhere in the cabin for at least ~7 seconds.

There may be situations when older versions of FSD are ramming into barricades, but I don’t think that happens on any current version. I’d be interested to see if this happens at all with V14. It’s still new, so I’d guess there aren’t any reports yet.

https://electrek.co/2025/10/29/tesl...-with-hallucinations-brake-stabbing-speeding/
https://www.benzinga.com/markets/te...l-not-good-enough-calls-waymo-robotaxi-leader

 

[wiyosaya]

IMO, any company that turns down Tesla's FakeSD is doing their customers a favor.

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

https://electrek.co/2025/10/29/tesl...-with-hallucinations-brake-stabbing-speeding/
https://www.benzinga.com/markets/te...l-not-good-enough-calls-waymo-robotaxi-leader

The first article is old, outdated, and by an extremely biased writer. Fred Lambert openly admits he's biased. However when version 14 first came out, there were indeed the issues he described. Now (with 14.2+) I no longer hear about reports of "brake stabbing" or the same kind of speeding.

I'd say I'm on the same page as Ross Gerber regarding the current state of Tesla FSD. It is a level 2 system by definition. Until Tesla decides it is safe enough to accept liability for any crashes caused by FSD it will stay that way. Waymo is indeed the leader right now, but even its latest/upcoming hardware (a modified Zeekr RT) is expected to be around 2-3x more expensive than Tesla's Robotaxis. As a result, Tesla has to further develop their software, while Waymo needs to cut their underlying costs.