20h ago

Can Tesla's Self-Driving Software Handle Bus-Only Lanes? Not Reliably, No.

Can Tesla's Self-Driving Software Handle Bus-Only Lanes? Not Reliably, No. - FuelArc News

From the last earnings call in 2024, Elon discussing bus-lanes:

Like, bus lanes in China are one of our biggest challenges in making FSD work in China is their bus lanes are very complicated. And there's like literally like hours of the day that you're allowed to be there and not be there.
And then if you accidentally go in at bus lane at the wrong time, you get an automatic ticket instantly... Anyway, we'll get this solved.

Wait, what do you mean - this isn't already solved? Tons of markets have time-controlled bus lanes, including American cities where FSD is fully operational.

Turns out, nope! Videos of FSD ignoring bus-only lanes are easy to find.

I feel bad for the bus drivers in Austin who will be sharing their lane with Tesla's autonomous taxi fleet in a couple weeks...

8 comments

For the sake of playing devil's advocate, many of the examples of going through bus lanes and FSD issues in general use the old hw3 hardware. Hw3 is no longer supported and doesn't get updates anymore. Anything new should use hw5 which is more advanced and has much better support. Hw4 solved many of these issues.
Hw3 FSD is good, but it still has some edge cases which don't work such as bus lanes, using express lanes, etc.
- I hear this feedback a lot! Hardware comments and software update comments. Like that the most recent combination of both is some sort of panacea for whatever glaring safety deficiency it is that I'm commenting on at the time. I don't blame you at all for making that argument, I appreciate a devil's advocate and I'm trying to be a generally more open-minded person.
  Here's the rub, though. HW4 was introduced, what, 2 years ago? HW3 was on sale as of 24 months ago, and they were selling FSD as a paid add-on with HW3. If it cannot do the job safely and reliably in every configuration it was sold in, it really doesn't matter what the top-of-the-line capability is.
  Imagine if Ford had seatbelts that killed people on the Ford Fiesta or airbags that didn't deploy. It wouldn't be a reasonable counterargument for Ford to say "well, that's not a problem, because they work fine on the Mustang GT, though."
  It's a safety issue with no obvious solve other than deactivating FSD on the systems where it doesn't work safely (which is the majority of Teslas that exist). Can't retrofit, because apparently the Tesla designers are about as good at designing cars as I am, and the form factor of HW4 doesn't fit in the HW3 slot.
  
  Imagine if Ford had seatbelts that killed people on the Ford Fiesta or airbags that didn't deploy. It wouldn't be a reasonable counterargument for Ford to say "well, that's not a problem, because they work fine on the Mustang GT, though."
  It's a safety issue with no obvious solve other than deactivating FSD on the systems where it doesn't work safely (which is the majority of Teslas that exist).
  I don't think that's a fair analogy. FSD in its current "supervised" form is not a safety device drivers are supposed to rely on, but an experimental feature which drivers can try out at their own risk. FSD has not left the "supervised" phase, and Elon has admitted that HW3 will never be capable of unsupervised FSD. Tesla won't use HW3 vehicles for their robotaxi fleet, they'll use HW5. If HW5 fixes the bus lane issue (and that is a big "if"), then the scenario of bus drivers sharing lanes with incompetent robotaxis as outlined in the OP will never occur.
  HW3 was on sale as of 24 months ago, and they were selling FSD as a paid add-on with HW3. If it cannot do the job safely and reliably in every configuration it was sold in, it really doesn't matter what the top-of-the-line capability is.
  Can't retrofit, because apparently the Tesla designers are about as good at designing cars as I am, and the form factor of HW4 doesn't fit in the HW3 slot.
  This is the bigger issue for Tesla from a legal standpoint. While Elon super-duper pinky-promised that an unsupervised-FSD-capable retrofit would be made available for free for all HW3 owners who purchased FSD, no timeline has been announced for this. If no retrofit materializes, Tesla are setting themselves up for a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all HW3 owners, who were sold "vehicles capable of unsupervised FSD in a few months/years".
  
  I'm watching that retrofit conversation closely. Gooniebirds are currently stating that HW3 will be upgraded to HW5 directly (which does not exist beyond typically fantasist claims by the CEO that it will be an order of magnitude higher powered than HW4), so I'm not totally sure yet.
  In the world we live in, in today-land where people are currently using FSD to drive their vehicles (in bus lanes and beyond!), the HW3 FSD vehicles were sold with false advertising. They cannot fully self drive, not safely, anyhow.
  So yeah, we'll see. Also, heya!

8 comments