We've been hearing for many years that fully autonomous driving is on the way, but the situation hasn't changed and the words to many, Elon Musk remains a lie. While the company is trying to do something about it, those owners of the company's EVs who are lucky enough to become FSD testers are constantly running into one problem or another. The last of these happened to an analyst from the Tesla company itself.
The driver assistance program, misnamed “Full Self-Driving“, has been repeatedly criticized for endangering Tesla drivers who dare to use it on public roads. Now Truist Securities analyst William Stein, who is barred from buying Tesla stock because he works for the manufacturer, has discovered that the technology simply isn't ready for release.
Stein nearly collided with another car that had “only partially completed a right turn”. “My quick intervention was absolutely necessary to avoid an accident,”, he wrote on Monday. While driving through the suburbs of New York, Stein is shocked that he was able to “take his head completely off the road” without any of the safety systems kicking in. He says the car was unresponsive "for 20 to 40 seconds before issuing a warning.
FSD also failed to stop the vehicle when an officer waved to let the funeral procession go. All of this reinforces Stein's view that FSD is “really amazing, but it doesn't even come close to solving the autonomy problem,”, referring to Musk's repeated promises to enable real self-driving.
This report stands out from the others because of Stein himself and his position. It can hardly be expected that he will change anything, because if he could, the company would have done so long ago. FSD is pretty underdeveloped so far and not too long ago we saw a report claiming that Tesla was engaging in some kind of scam by setting up autopilot for certain famous bloggers and influencers to make things better for them and therefore feature them better online.
Stein's experience echoes many other incidents involving Tesla's driver assistance software, many of which have been fatal, prompting an investigation by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Despite numerous updates that have been released over the years to customers who were willing to pay up to $8,000 for the privilege of testing the system, the software is still not ready. And users seem to understand this, as studies show many abandon FSD shortly after starting to use it.