For the past several years, Elon Musk has been saying that true Full Self-Driving is right around the corner. His largely fruitless FSD predictions have become the stuff of Tesla (TSLA) -) legend and lore, to the point that he acknowledged his part as the "boy who cried FSD" in August.
Still, Musk is convinced that "we'll be better than human by the end of this year." And, predicated on that prediction, many investors are incredibly bullish on Tesla not as a car company, but as a dominant force in the nascent robotaxi industry, Cathie Wood of Ark Invest chief among them.
Related: Engineering whistleblower explains why safe Full Self-Driving can't ever happen
Tesla started gradually rolling out version 11 of its FSD beta software last year. Despite its name, Teslas that have activated FSD do not drive themselves; drivers have to be ready to take over at a moment's notice, with their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel.
While all new Teslas come equipped with FSD hardware, drivers have to purchase an FSD package to get access to it. FSD can be purchased for $12,000; drivers can alternatively subscribe to FSD for $199 a month.
Barron's spent a month subscribed to FSD version 11.3.6, covering more than 1,000 miles autonomously.
"It’s impressive, but the car has a personality," Barron's wrote. "It drives like a mash of a teenager with a learner’s permit and an octogenarian, like the reporter’s father, who doesn’t mind caution no matter how everyone else is driving around him."
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The overall perspective on FSD based on the 1,000 miles covered during the test run was that the system works well most of the time, with most drives only requiring one or two human interventions.
Where the system struggled, however, was with wide intersections, blind corners, potholes, construction, flashing yellow lights, heavy fog, unpainted speed bumps and getting cut off by other drivers.
Nothing terrible happened when they encountered these situations, but a "licensed adult needs to be there to manage all the little things that can come up" during a drive, effectively preventing that dream of watching Netflix on the drive to work.
Still, as TheStreet reported Sept. 18, numerous vulnerabilities exist both within self-driving systems and the methodologies employed by carmakers to train them.
Shares of Tesla rose slightly in pre-market trading.
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