alt.hn

4/17/2026 at 7:00:07 PM

Tesla tells HW3 owner to 'be patient' after 7 years of waiting for FSD

 https://electrek.co/2026/04/17/tesla-hw3-owners-be-patient-7-years-fsd/

by breve

4/17/2026 at 11:02:56 PM

Full disclosure. I am currently shorting TSLA so take what I am about to post with an appropriate amount of salt.

I gotta say I am continuously amazed how much Musk is allowed to get away with. I know he can get some things done and he is, apparently, skilled manager, fund raiser and bs'er of epic proportions, but I have a hard time understanding how all this didn't catch up to him yet.

by iugtmkbdfil834

4/17/2026 at 11:42:25 PM

As it turns out, having unfathomable amounts of wealth lets you get away with just about anything.

by nickvec

4/18/2026 at 1:43:43 AM

He has immense wealth from fraud and he is able to commit fraud because of his immense wealth.

by 2OEH8eoCRo0

4/18/2026 at 9:39:50 PM

Elon can remain a successful bs'er longer than you can remain solvent... or something like that.

by disqard

4/18/2026 at 6:44:41 AM

Rockets land

by MattDamonSpace

4/18/2026 at 2:28:59 AM

You don’t get away with it.

If you can’t walk into a pizzeria on a whim (thinking about sama this week), you no longer have your freedom.

by DANmode

4/18/2026 at 5:26:32 AM

The freedoms afforded by obnoxious wealth far outweigh the loss of anonymity. These folks could buy an entire franchise of pizzerias on a whim and have them transported to a chain of private islands in the Pacific.

The myth of the tortured life of the rich and famous is a joke.

by b00ty4breakfast

4/18/2026 at 11:58:19 AM

Especially given it is a choice. There are ample billionaires who avoid media. The tech billionaires choose this.

by UncleMeat

4/20/2026 at 7:33:20 AM

Even more especially given it is a choice to be a completely unempathetic prick who thrives on being controversial and edgy

by mfru

4/18/2026 at 5:04:13 AM

I don't follow, can Musk not do that? Also who/what is sama?

by hn_user82179

4/18/2026 at 5:07:37 AM

It's Sam Altman's HN username.

by eco

4/18/2026 at 7:55:42 PM

Without security?

Sure - but it’s a risk that people of the unknown variety don’t have.

by DANmode

4/18/2026 at 10:30:03 PM

Feels like the world that he created by hoarding vast sums of wealth, and limiting people's free speech, and cutting social safety net programs that put more and more people at risk as the world becomes less and less stable.

I would much rather have lived in the world where he could walk into a pizza place without security and fear. But I also would much rather have lived in the world where people had healthcare and they didn't have to fight companies like UHC tooth and nail to avoid getting their claims denied at every turn.

And the stability of this all comes from trust in Government regulation. Which he gutted, when he gutted the programs that were targeting him for committing fraud.

by xracy

4/19/2026 at 1:44:52 AM

> I would much rather have lived in the world where he could walk into a pizza place without security and fear.

I’m not sure I would.

I think I’m okay with there being some remaining consequences for things you do to other people,

even if what you’ve done is legal.

by DANmode

4/19/2026 at 7:38:29 PM

You misunderstand me.

> I think I’m okay with there being some remaining consequences for things you do to other people,

I would rather live in the world where they hadn't done those things to other people. Not that I would rather people forgive them and let them into a pizza shop. It's a pizza shop, who cares, they have a million other ways to get pizza if they want it. Ostracism is the last response we have for the wealthy doing unacceptable things.

by xracy

4/18/2026 at 2:59:04 AM

You can have a private chef make you michelin level pizza in the stone oven in the kitchen of your private jet though.

by Traubenfuchs

4/18/2026 at 10:32:10 AM

Sounds like a prison. I can honestly say that I wouldn’t like that if i couldn’t appear in public. A luxury prison, but a prison nonetheless.

(Having the money would be nice, of course.)

by beng-nl

4/18/2026 at 5:12:25 AM

Can you also have private and vetted strangers eat and mingle around you,

so you feel like less of a pariah?

by DANmode

4/18/2026 at 4:49:33 PM

Yes. I know a person that used to work in casting for such events.

by shye

4/18/2026 at 7:57:41 PM

My point was,

you’re still a social outcast,

no matter how much expensive Truman Show you set up around you.

by DANmode

4/18/2026 at 9:37:11 AM

Sure, but who would want that?

by M95D

4/19/2026 at 4:28:04 AM

Not me, that’s for sure.

by DANmode

4/18/2026 at 1:38:26 PM

I have a VC fund to pitch you. Need a co-founder? /s

by gessha

4/18/2026 at 10:17:00 PM

I actually do,

but I like to serve humans, not serve humans.

by DANmode

4/17/2026 at 11:29:30 PM

What's the old saying, again? "Musk can remain untouchable longer than you can remain solvent."

by CamperBob2

4/17/2026 at 11:52:23 PM

:D As Abraham Lincoln once said, one cannot trust anything on the internet. Still, it is a carefully considered risk. I certainly didn't put money on it I am not ready to actually lose.

by iugtmkbdfil834

4/17/2026 at 11:19:14 PM

If it's true that Musk is getting rules changes so that SpaceX can be included in the S&P earlier than the current rules allow, I think there's a non-zero chance of Musk falling even more out of favor than he currently is, if not worse (if the SpaceX IPO ends up losing people money in the first 1-2 years)

by cj

4/17/2026 at 11:29:49 PM

The hype train will ensure the SpaceX IPO is successful beyond the 2nd year mark. Musk keeps making these moves because he knows, he doesn’t want it catching up to him. Better to offload the risk to Wall Street.

by reactordev

4/18/2026 at 2:21:32 AM

I don't imagine anyone is trying to manipulate TSLA with an HN comment so I consider your position to be putting your money where your mouth is.

by cosmicgadget

4/17/2026 at 11:15:00 PM

Hey maybe he actually is a genius. After all, he committed securities fraud at least twice and so far has suffered zero consequences.

by stackghost

4/18/2026 at 4:16:27 AM

He's not a genius.

The elder generation of politicians he manipulated were educated in their day in historical allegory and gospel

Leadership is ignorant and clueless. No idea how "check the work" so to speak. Didn't matter to them. Trickle down made them rich. They ultimately began to encourage it

Congress is predominantly nihilists who pretend to believe in American norms to secure power

by yabutlivnWoods

4/18/2026 at 5:11:39 AM

The more money you have, the more you can get away with, and he has the most money. Capitalism baby.

by platevoltage

4/18/2026 at 7:06:03 PM

"Everything I don't like is capitalism."

I don't like it either, but it's not capitalism. Nothing Musk has done would have been possible without active support from governments putting their fingers on the scale.

by CamperBob2

4/18/2026 at 9:45:39 PM

Right right right. You're going to argue that Crony Capitalism isn't Capitalism. Heard that one before.

by platevoltage

4/17/2026 at 11:05:34 PM

well he is the wealthiest most powerful person in the world right now, mainly because of SpaceX - I think this gives him plot armour until his eventual demise in 8.3 years

by stringfood

4/17/2026 at 8:33:25 PM

He should try to cancel the original purchase agreement on the grounds that now the functionality is available Tesla has demonstrated no intention of delivering it to him, thus voiding the original agreement. Normally if a judge agrees, you get a full refund without controlling for depreciation.

Class actions in the Netherlands mostly favor lawyers.

by wjnc

4/17/2026 at 9:53:45 PM

I guess that’s the point, FSD is not available. What you buy is lvl 4/5 available is lvl 2+.

I think, this is a calculation to understand if an upgrade of hw3 to hw4 actually solves the problem or if hw3 must be updated to hw5.

One upgrade is more economical than two, but I would be annoyed for sure as well.

by LunicLynx

4/17/2026 at 10:33:15 PM

The definition of what “Tesla FSD is has changed over time. Earlier buyers were promised more, so they have a stronger case on that basis as well.

by nerdsniper

4/17/2026 at 11:44:51 PM

> I think, this is a calculation to understand if an upgrade of hw3 to hw4 actually solves the problem or if hw3 must be updated to hw5.

HW5 is unlikely to solve FSD.

by burnte

4/18/2026 at 12:21:05 AM

Doesn't canceling the original purchase agreement mean you have to give the car back?

by LoganDark

4/18/2026 at 2:19:17 AM

That sounds like even more of a win.

by redwall_hp

4/18/2026 at 5:20:28 AM

Yeah but it’s a 7 year old car, if it’s a Model 3 it’s around 20000€, nowhere near the original price

by akmarinov

4/18/2026 at 10:53:19 AM

I don't know US law but if the contract is void the original purchasing price would have to be given back in most countries.

by OoooooooO

4/18/2026 at 1:19:51 PM

You mean 13k (got the offer some months ago. Probably less now). That includes VAT by the way. On a VAT-car

by MasanskY01

4/19/2026 at 9:03:41 PM

If they purchased the car 7 years ago I doubt they got it for that price. GP says "without controlling for depreciation"

by LoganDark

4/18/2026 at 1:22:00 AM

I would love for everyone with a Tesla to do that.

by bmitc

4/17/2026 at 9:29:54 PM

Here is the website where you (as a European) can gather and hopefully help provide more weight to the matter if you were among the ones that were promised something you're not gonna receive: https://hw3claim.nl/

It's run by the person mentioned in the article, and unsurprisingly the domain is Dutch, but seems the same thing will apply in lots of countries if FSD rolls out there too, not just Netherlands.

by embedding-shape

4/17/2026 at 9:53:59 PM

Maybe Elon can argue that no reasonable person would have taken his FSD promises seriously.

by codechicago277

4/18/2026 at 3:01:48 AM

Their lawyers already did that and got it ruled that Tesla’s statements are unbelievable lies and thus Tesla is not liable for deceiving customers or the public.

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/califor...

On page 16, the judge states that the defendants, Tesla, argued: “Defendants also assert that several Safety Statements are corporate puffery. For example, statements that safety is “paramount” (FAC ¶ 325), Tesla cars are “absurdly safe” (id.), autopilot is “superhuman” (FAC ¶ 337), and “we want to get to as close to perfection as possible” (FAC ¶ 363). Mot. at 19.”

by Veserv

4/18/2026 at 6:18:14 AM

Not a lawyer, but pretty sure shit like that doesn’t fly in the EU.

by WA

4/17/2026 at 11:18:02 PM

it worked for fox news!

by laweijfmvo

4/17/2026 at 11:24:01 PM

And MSNBC in court.

by SV_BubbleTime

4/17/2026 at 11:45:17 PM

Thank Fox for paving the way for inserting your opinion in news. Did you not know that Fox did it in court first?

by daveguy

4/18/2026 at 6:09:32 AM

I offered no opinion.

by SV_BubbleTime

4/18/2026 at 2:21:51 PM

I wasn't talking about anything related to your opinions. I was pointing out that Fox had to claim "entertainment" in court for their opinion commentators long before MSNBC. Because you disingenuously implied that MSNBC was somehow the opinion news that had to admit in court their coverage included opinions.

In case you forgot you replied to "It worked for fox news [claiming opinion]" with "And MSNBC in court."

Since you clearly misread or purposely misconstrued my statement, let me rephrase:

"Thank Fox for paving the way for inserting ones opinion in news. Did you not know that Fox had to do it in court first?"

by daveguy

4/18/2026 at 6:41:42 PM

You seem to be waging a war of words with someone who merely said “also these guys did it too”.

by VertanaNinjai

4/19/2026 at 2:19:10 AM

You seem to be fair and balanced, just like your buddy.

by daveguy

4/17/2026 at 9:23:16 PM

It will come right after terraforming Mars is complete, which will be next year. We will also have UBI and all illegal immigrants on Republican farms will have been replaced by Optimus robots.

by alHqn

4/17/2026 at 9:41:27 PM

I’m forever dismayed that no government agency has cracked down on Tesla’s endless fraudulent claims. It’s a shame people were falling for it 7 years ago, much less today, but only the governments can enforce actual fairness.

by skywhopper

4/18/2026 at 4:09:53 AM

It would require an administration that had a modicum of care for the average consumer/taxpayer, and the current one isn’t it.

by Mobius01

4/20/2026 at 1:22:51 PM

FSD was a sham under Biden too though.

by senordevnyc

4/17/2026 at 10:58:27 PM

Bought FSD with my Model 3 back in 2018 here in the states. FSD still not delivered and no realistic timeline. Tesla is hoping we upgrade or sell car, but luckily we don't drive much and plan to keep it as long as it keeps running, so they'll have to make us whole eventually.

by adocomplete

4/17/2026 at 11:49:05 PM

But how? In the states you can’t even take legal action but are forced into arbitration?

by ricw

4/18/2026 at 4:22:05 PM

Many legal contracts include provisions to forfeit the right to trial.

by xnx

4/18/2026 at 4:48:35 PM

How does it work if the contract hasn't been fulfilled by Tesla? Wouldn't that nullify the entire contract and Tesla would have to return the full price paid and presumably collect the car.

by ndsipa_pomu

4/17/2026 at 9:31:31 PM

I have both HW3 (2021 Y) and HW4 (2025 3). FSD in the HW4 is a delight. FSD in HW3 phantom brakes constantly both back when FSD was a pile of C++ and now with the "Lite" driving model. I don't see how Tesla can ever make FSD suitable on HW3 given the hardware (<200 TOPS).

by rubiquity

4/17/2026 at 9:26:58 PM

I'm one of these unlucky owners. I can't believe I'll ever get anything.

After paying the full cost and being stuck on old software that had a promise of having the hardware required for it

by zackify

4/19/2026 at 11:26:28 AM

How much does it bother you that despite your vehicle [most likely] shipping with active lidar, the Tesla executiveteam decided to not write software for its modern usage? More or less than the decade of "available next year"s?

by ProllyInfamous

4/17/2026 at 9:43:07 PM

Same here. I would totally be fine if HW3 FSD was reduced to $50 a month, but charging the same $100 as HW4 is insulting at this point.

by iamjake648

4/17/2026 at 8:41:32 PM

rode with my friend from San Francisco down to San Diego in his Tesla, and he literally didn't touch the wheel or the pedals the whole time. Then a couple days later we drove back the same way.

People don't talk about these cars driving themselves enough imho

by Flatcircle

4/17/2026 at 9:12:31 PM

Did a trial for a month. It's indeed very impressive but at the same time, it's also very stressful because you don't know how the car is going to react. So I was on constant alert if there were any tricky situations. After some time, it became exhausting and more draining then manual driving.

by hazelnut

4/17/2026 at 9:19:03 PM

A while back, Tesla gave me free FSD for a month and so I tried it out. It drove me to work just fine, and I was impressed.

Then, on the way home it drove me home on the wrong side of the street and I had to take over. Such a silly mistake.

Similar to what you said; from there on out, it was more trouble than it's worth because you can't let your guard down.

by not_a_bot_4sho

4/17/2026 at 9:55:25 PM

That was exactly my experience with the free trial. I figure if I'm going to have to pay thousands of dollars to still have to pay full attention when I drive, I might as well keep the money and drive the car.

FWIW: My 2026 Huyndai's driver assistance is better than my old 2018 Tesla Model 3's enhanced autopilot.

by gwbas1c

4/17/2026 at 11:07:27 PM

2026 hyundai driver assist is ok but the lines have to be very clearly defined on the road and won't do much under 25 mph

by stringfood

4/17/2026 at 11:49:02 PM

Same here. Car took a left turn through an orange filter light, detected oncoming traffic and decided 'nope' to the turn and just ... stopped ... in the oncoming lanes.

I find it less cognitive load to drive it myself. It's easier to predict what other vehicles will do than my own. Boo.

I have sympathy with the challenges as I worked in the field.

by robotresearcher

4/17/2026 at 11:51:25 PM

Was this a Tesla with HW3 or HW4? Also, was it in the US or outside the US?

by SilverSlash

4/17/2026 at 9:56:03 PM

This was my experience. Kept getting told just try the new version. When I would the issues I had weren’t fixed and I bounced off it again. For very long trips it’s nice, but so is lane assist.

It always had the feeling of being outside with your toddler by the pool. I can look away but I have 50/50 odds of a dead toddler if I do it for to long.

by elictronic

4/17/2026 at 10:06:23 PM

This is what the Tesla fans have been saying for years. "Oh, you're on the previous software version, bro. You gotta try the latest version, bro, trust me bro it's so much better. FSD on the current version is totally working for me, bro." "Oh, you're on today's software version? Don't worry, bro, the next one is going to be so much better, just wait for it bro, trust me bro we're going to have working FSD in the next version, bro."

by ryandrake

4/18/2026 at 7:58:43 AM

Bonus: Replacing "Tesla fans" with "AI fans" and "FSD" with "model" works too.

by Mawr

4/18/2026 at 1:53:42 PM

There are too many things that can go wrong, you should never look away from the road for more than a second or two.

Adaptive cruise control, lane keeping, blind spot detection and emergency braking are all the modern automation I want in a personal vehicle at this point. Other drivers are unpredictable, I want to choose how I respond to their various forms of idiocy and not delegate to a black box.

by slfnflctd

4/17/2026 at 9:16:08 PM

That was my impression as well. You have to babysit the AI the whole time and if you fail to do that it's basically your life (and others' of course) on the line.

by twothreeone

4/17/2026 at 9:17:57 PM

what do you think it is train drivers do?

by 6510

4/17/2026 at 9:19:54 PM

Doing their absolute best with the steering wheel not to go off those pencil-thin tracks?

by rzzzt

4/18/2026 at 12:32:12 AM

Run on premade, static tracks with clearly divided "roads" from the rest of road participants.

Their role is to stop the train in an emergency and adjust to speed etc. to track/driving conditions.

Automating their job probably wouldn't even need the complex ML used for self-driving because the context is significantly simpler and relatively well defined. Maybe a team in city might need such a model but it would still be a significantly simpler task than driving a car.

by c0balt

4/17/2026 at 10:39:37 PM

Getting paid to babysit. Tesla asks you to pay to babysit.

by taylodl

4/18/2026 at 8:03:45 AM

Trains are really unpredictable. Even in the middle of a forest two rails can appear out of nowhere, and a 1.5-mile fully loaded coal drag, heading east out of the low-sulfur mines of the PRB, will be right on your ass the next moment.

I was doing laundry in my basement, and I tripped over a metal bar that wasn't there the moment before. I looked down: "Rail? WTF?" and then I saw concrete sleepers underneath and heard the rumbling. Deafening railroad horn. I dumped my wife's pants, unfolded, and dove behind the water heater. It was a double-stacked Z train, headed east towards the fast single track of the BNSF Emporia Sub (Flint Hills). Majestic as hell: 75 mph, 6 units, distributed power: 4 ES44DC's pulling, and 2 Dash-9's pushing, all in run 8. Whole house smelled like diesel for a couple of hours!

Fact is, there is no way to discern which path a train will take, so you really have to be watchful. If only there were some way of knowing the routes trains travel; maybe some sort of marks on the ground, like twin iron bars running along the paths trains take. You could look for trains when you encounter the iron bars on the ground, and avoid these sorts of collisions. But such a measure would be extremely expensive. And how would one enforce a rule keeping the trains on those paths?

A big hole in homeland security is railway engineer screening and hijacking prevention. There is nothing to stop a rogue engineer, or an ISIS terrorist, from driving a train into the Pentagon, the White House or the Statue of Liberty, and our government has done fuck-all to prevent it.

by Mawr

4/17/2026 at 10:04:55 PM

Should Tesla pay people to use Autopilot?

by bloggie

4/17/2026 at 9:21:31 PM

Sounds like babysitting an LLM, with the alarming difference that this AI can kill you if you are not paying enough attention

by wofo

4/17/2026 at 11:49:53 PM

Oh don't worry the LLMs absolutely can kill us, just slightly more indirectly.

Triggering psychosis is not difficult and the LLM is easily capable of doing that. For a person they soon get freaked out and are likely to summon help. "Johnny started acting crazy and I'm not sure what to do, please come". But the LLM isn't a person, Johnny needs to know more about the CIA's programme to cross breed Venusians with Hollywood stars? Here's an itinerary with the address of a real hotel in LA and an entirely hallucinated CIA officer's schedule.

Next thing you know, Johnny is shot dead by officers responding to a maniac with a fire axe who broke into an LA hotel and was screaming about space aliens.

by tialaramex

4/18/2026 at 1:45:17 AM

>Johnny is shot dead by officers responding to a maniac with a fire axe who broke into an LA hotel and was screaming about space aliens.

I’m pretty sure LAPD is too used to this sort of thing to get spooked by it?

by razingeden

4/18/2026 at 7:03:04 AM

They'll shoot you for much less.

by Hikikomori

4/17/2026 at 9:37:59 PM

Same here phantom braking on the highway, randomly turned off in the middle of an intersection turn and didn’t get over in time for exit and decided to brake in the left lane to try and force over. While it was fun to try it’s not reliable for me to trust. That and If I lean my head the wrong direction resting it I start getting yelled at by it.

by wookmaster

4/18/2026 at 3:13:46 AM

This is where teaching my teenage son how to drive was a great preparation. Also my wife is not a great driver and I've been married to her for 20 years.

Compared to either one of them, FSD is way less stressful and is a vastly better driver.

by JPKab

4/17/2026 at 11:36:40 PM

Exactly. Said it before and I'll say it again.

I do not want to be the 'manager of my car'. That'd be a downgrade from being an actual driver.

Lane Assist, auto-stop-start, cruise control are enough for me and have been available mostly for decades and require a similar amount of attention.

FSD is a busted flush and I can't believe those who got conned by it aren't more vocal.

by LightBug1

4/18/2026 at 7:53:53 AM

300k people subscribe every month tho.

by dzhiurgis

4/18/2026 at 10:04:39 AM

In 2025, McDonald's served over 65 to 70 million customers daily.

In 2024, Donald Trump received 77,302,580 votes.

Do you have a point?

by LightBug1

4/18/2026 at 8:49:48 PM

Tons of people pay for it every month and rave about it. I suspect they find it useful.

by dzhiurgis

4/18/2026 at 9:05:05 PM

[dead]

by LightBug1

4/17/2026 at 9:42:13 PM

I hear this a lot, and I'm genuinely curious why you think it might take more energy to be on alert for tricky situations. Wouldn't you already be doing that for your own manual driving?

by iamjake648

4/17/2026 at 9:53:49 PM

Think about a junior coworker you offloaded some of your tasks to. It turns out the coworker frequently makes mistakes. At some point you are going to say it is easier to just do this myself. Especially if a single mistake can cost you your life!

by lateforwork

4/17/2026 at 9:49:43 PM

I’m guessing that predicting the failure modes of a computer is more taxing than your brain using pattern recognition of what it needs to react to.

If you’re driving, your brain can automatically prioritize the importance of things that you see. But since a computer fails in different ways than a human, you lose all automatic prioritization

by californical

4/17/2026 at 10:45:58 PM

I know my normal, non-self-driving car won't randomly slam on the brakes or swerve into a median. Even if I take my hands off the wheel, I know it will keep going straight-ish for a second or two.

A "self-driving" tesla is an adversary you need to supervise to make sure it doesn't take actions you wouldn't expect of a normal car.

As other posters have pointed out, it's like running an LLM with `--dangerously-skip-permissions`: I wouldn't `rm -rf /` my computer (or in the case of tesla, my life), but an AI might.

by ImPostingOnHN

4/17/2026 at 9:47:41 PM

It's easier to predict, understand, and react to your own driving behavior.

by rented_mule

4/17/2026 at 10:26:13 PM

It's not just "tricky situations", sometimes FSD will do things that no normal driver would ever do, and it will do them inconsistently. Sometimes it's brilliant and sometimes it's drunk.

by jerlam

4/17/2026 at 9:47:40 PM

Because constantly switching between full attention and degraded attention (which the FSD promises) is more tiring that staying on full attention continuously.

by whiplash451

4/17/2026 at 11:14:54 PM

This is a subject that has been studied quite a bit, as there are a bunch of jobs where people have to monitor for rare emergencies, and react fast if an emergency should arise. Things like pilots on flights with autopilot; lifeguards watching for swimmers in distress; CCTV monitoring; operating airport X-ray machines, and so on.

One such study is "Performance consequences of automation-induced 'complacency'" (Parasuraman, Molloy & Singh, 1993) https://www.pacdeff.com/pdfs/Automation%20Induced%20Complace...

Previous studies had found that a human and a computer performed markedly better than either a human alone or a computer alone - but in those studies failures were quite common, so they didn't give the humans time to get bored or distracted.

When researchers got test subjects to perform a simulated flying task, monitoring a system with 99%+ reliability, they found the humans were proportionally much worse at stepping in than they were on less reliable systems.

Swimming pool lifeguards will often change posts every 15-20 minutes and and get a 10-15 minute break every hour, to keep things interesting enough that they can pay attention. Good luck getting drivers to do that.

by michaelt

4/17/2026 at 11:38:18 PM

> Things like pilots on flights with autopilot;

Funny, I was going to mention exactly that. I'm a private pilot with a modern autopilot and flying is exhausting. Partly because the piston engine is rattling your brain the entire time but also because you're on high alert the entire time. You're always making sure the autopilot is keeping the plane on the blue (or green) line and is being predictable. And my smartwatch shows my heart rate is usually more elevated on autopilot than not.

by iamtheworstdev

4/18/2026 at 4:24:57 PM

The fundamental problem is that "staying alert for tricky situations" is essentially an exercise in prediction. FSD effectively hides a bunch of variables from you, making the prediction harder.

Have you ever been a passenger of an unpredictable driver? Was that stressful? Now, add not just the capacity but the responsibility to fix their mistakes.

by amalcon

4/18/2026 at 8:08:03 AM

There's no way to model what a "tricky situation" may be to an opaque and ever-changing piece of self-driving software. It may fail in random ways at random times — it's completely, 100% unpredictable.

Therefore, you have to be 100% ready at all times to react in case anything that's possible happens.

Sounds way more tiring than just driving yourself and only having to account for the known, relatively easy to model human failure modes.

by Mawr

4/17/2026 at 9:59:05 PM

This is the real trick about 95% accurate or 99% accurate, if you never know when that 1% incident will occur, you ALWAYS have to watch for it. And eventually we'll have to live with the fact it'll never hit 100% accuracy, just as we don't have 100% accuracy today with human driving.

by burnte

4/17/2026 at 9:28:54 PM

It is a great feature, but, ADAS is by definition not self-driving, no matter how capable it is at manipulating the controls. The lowest level of self driving is level 3, where the human is responsible for supervision less than 100% of the time but greater than 0% of the time. Tesla FSD is level 2 and requires the human driver to supervise operations of the ADAS system 100% of the time.

https://www.faistgroup.com/site/assets/files/1657/j3016-leve...

While FSD's manipulation of controls is impressive -- it is missing a very critical component that is required for self driving: the ability to guarantee whether or not it can make a safe decision. Tesla's FSD still offloads this task to the human driver. Once they can do this more than zero percent of the time, they will have achieved level 3.

by kube-system

4/17/2026 at 10:24:12 PM

This system sounds worse than useless - automating the easy part of the task, while making the hard part harder.

by marssaxman

4/17/2026 at 10:27:50 PM

It isn't useless. Like cruise control, you don't need full automation to make driving more comfortable. Hands-off level 2 systems are great for long distance travel. I turn them off when I'm navigating situations that require high levels of decision making, however, e.g. driving through a crowded parking garage.

by kube-system

4/17/2026 at 11:10:43 PM

I suppose that comfort is an individual thing - having to sit in place, staring ahead, watching the road, with nothing to do, sounds to me like a kind of torture. I rarely use cruise control; operating the vehicle is what keeps me engaged enough in the drive that my mind doesn't wander. But cruise control is obviously popular, so there are clearly many people who experience driving differently.

by marssaxman

4/18/2026 at 6:32:10 AM

"having to sit in place, staring ahead, watching the road, with nothing to do" while accepting full legal liability should anything go wrong

by MengerSponge

4/17/2026 at 10:15:20 PM

> People don't talk about these cars driving themselves enough imho

It’s because driving on the freeway isn’t FSD, it’s a better version of cruise control, and other companies also offer similar capabilities. Within a city, the thing is a shitshow. It does random things all the time and it’s almost a larger cognitive burden on me to constantly be on the lookout for it to make mistake where I have to take over vs me just driving the car myself. For me specifically, it’s just impossible to drive because it fails to recognize curved streets and a couple of other irregularities just within blocks of where I live.

by darth_avocado

4/17/2026 at 10:25:02 PM

In a city not only does it do random things, when it does work it’s calibrated so poorly people behind me signal all the time because it’s too slow.

On a freeway it’s only kind of usable. It switches lanes far too aggressively and for no reason, to the point that it makes the ride uncomfortable.

What I really want is auto steer with lane switching when I signal, which for some reason I could never get working in any mode. It either doesn’t change lanes at all, or changes them arbitrarily of its own volition. And if I change lanes manually it turns off autosteer, which is too irritating to use in practice.

Tesla self driving, in any mode, is a bad product. And I say this as a Tesla fan.

by coffeemug

4/17/2026 at 10:20:58 PM

Weird. Works great in cities for me. It’s been more than fancy cruise control for awhile.

by zwily

4/17/2026 at 11:35:03 PM

This is HN where people using text files only is the best way to do things and being semi-Luddite is the way.

FSD is amazing. Any notion it takes more effort to use it than driving is made up.

by skinnymuch

4/18/2026 at 11:08:40 AM

Yeah it's cool if you're driving from Alice Springs to Darwin.

by expedition32

4/17/2026 at 11:03:16 PM

I regularly ride down I-40 and back in North Carolina in my Rivian. I don't touch the wheel from the moment I get on the highway until the moment I get off, pretty much, unless I decide to take a rest stop. The universal hands free is as good or better than what my old Tesla had, and it'll get updates while a 2019 Model 3 almost certainly won't.

On the other hand, when I got FSD trials in the model 3 in the last year or so, it never managed to get more than ~a mile without me having to disengage.

by bastawhiz

4/17/2026 at 8:55:49 PM

I've driven from Dallas to Houston barely having to touch the wheel or pedals the whole way. I don't own a Tesla.

Other brands have had self driving features for years now. Some even operate at a higher level of automation.

by vel0city

4/18/2026 at 5:35:13 AM

Just go test drive one before you attempt to make a comparison, this statement is embarrassing tbh

by iknowstuff

4/17/2026 at 9:04:43 PM

Which car? Seems like Tesla has the best version although I suppose it depends on the circumstances of the trip.

by satvikpendem

4/17/2026 at 9:09:55 PM

Mustang Mach E. But once again, lots of other cars have similar self driving tech, many better than the Mach E or Teslas. The Bolt I was considering at the time could have also done most of that trip hands-free.

And that was actual hands-free, while Teslas at the time required you to take putting torque on the wheel to lie to the system.

Even then my 2017 Hyundai did practically everything but steer. Get it on the highway, turn on ACC, and it'll handle the traffic just keep it in the lane. It even did all the stop and go traffic.

by vel0city

4/17/2026 at 9:20:23 PM

Which ones are better today?

by satvikpendem

4/17/2026 at 9:27:15 PM

A used toyota corolla with comma 4

by kube-system

4/17/2026 at 11:05:49 PM

My R1T's autonomous driving is decidedly better than Tesla autopilot. I say that from thousands of miles driven with each.

by bastawhiz

4/17/2026 at 9:58:23 PM

Highest end mercedes?

by realo

4/17/2026 at 10:06:49 PM

No. Their L3 was a scam, never sold and not actually planned to be sold anymore.

by iknowstuff

4/17/2026 at 10:10:21 PM

So, the same as Tesla's L3.

by kube-system

4/18/2026 at 12:44:20 AM

You can go to austin and take an unsupervised robotaxi right now

by iknowstuff

4/18/2026 at 5:28:25 PM

Robotaxi is a service, not a product you can buy.

by kube-system

4/18/2026 at 6:50:32 PM

Runs fsd 14.3

by iknowstuff

4/18/2026 at 7:22:58 PM

FSD has never operated above level 2 in any vehicle Tesla has ever sold, per their own documentation.

Robotaxi either has significant differences from the vehicles they sell or they are operating against highway safety standards. (Which could be the case because NHTSA is currently investigating this)

by kube-system

4/19/2026 at 11:46:21 AM

or its good enough for fenced L4

by iknowstuff

4/19/2026 at 4:00:29 PM

Then why do they tell regulators it’s level 2 when they sell vehicles with that software?

by kube-system

4/20/2026 at 6:54:06 AM

They’re telling them exactly the same thing they’re telling customers

by iknowstuff

4/18/2026 at 1:21:37 AM

Last I heard they still have a car following. Has that actually changed?

by vel0city

4/18/2026 at 5:30:57 AM

Yes

by iknowstuff

4/17/2026 at 9:11:43 PM

You have no idea what you're talking about. The highway-only driver assistance on cars like Fords does not compare at all to what you get on a Tesla with the latest hardware.

by 4fterd4rk

4/17/2026 at 9:12:29 PM

Barely touching the wheel is a qualitatively different experience than never touching the wheel. HW4 Tesla owners have gone over 10,000 miles without intervening, including a cross-country trip.[1] The car even finds charging/parking spots and parks on its own. The only equivalent I’ve experienced is Waymo, and you can’t buy a Waymo.

1. https://www.tesla.com/customer-stories/cross-country-trip-fu...

by ggreer

4/17/2026 at 9:15:14 PM

I don't trust anything Tesla posts on their website about self driving. They've been known to post entirely fictional stories about their self driving. Crazy you still choose to believe them after they've been known to so brazenly lie there.

by vel0city

4/17/2026 at 9:38:46 PM

David Moss is a traveling LiDAR salesman. He doesn’t work for Tesla, and Tesla didn’t know about him until one of his tweets about his FSD experience went viral. Unless you think he faked images of his FSD stats for months and Tesla went along with it, I’m not sure what to tell you.[1]

1. https://x.com/DavidMoss/status/2010608939751047484

by ggreer

4/17/2026 at 9:46:23 PM

I don't know who David Moss is, I have no reason to trust him. His tweets I can see are practically nothing but Tesla and Grok shill posts.

by vel0city

4/17/2026 at 9:52:38 PM

Let’s say, hypothetically, that someone has gone thousands of miles on FSD without intervening. What information would need to exist to convince you of this?

by ggreer

4/17/2026 at 10:51:34 PM

The verified, raw data of at least 1,000 other people's worth of data, so the data has a chance of being statistically significant, rather than 1 random dude out of billions posting on the car company CEO's website (on which said CEO is infamous for moderating content to suit his views and ego).

by ImPostingOnHN

4/18/2026 at 2:16:52 AM

That’s what it will take for you to believe that someone has gone thousands of miles without intervening? I don’t think that even Waymo (which has thousands of vehicles that have gone much farther without human intervention) has met the criteria you’ve set.

by ggreer

4/18/2026 at 5:00:04 AM

If one person can do this then thousands should also be able to.

by UltraSane

4/18/2026 at 2:48:08 PM

> If one person can do this then thousands should also be able to.

That’s not at all true. Very few people take the time to drive thousands of miles in a short period of time and document it while never intervening for any reason (not even accidentally bumping the wheel).

Anyways, I remember you. You claimed that Tesla would never remove safety drivers from their robotaxis.[1] I tried to get us to bet on this prediction but you never replied.

Well, Tesla has removed safety drivers from some of their robotaxis, meaning your prediction that their technology is “never going to be reliable enough” was falsified within a few months.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45661368

by ggreer

4/18/2026 at 3:59:37 PM

It is true because millions of people own Tesla's with FSD. Moreover if FSD really worked this well Tesla would be happily publishing this data at tesla.com/FSDstats . But instead Tesla is very secretive with their FSD data because it overall isn't very good.

"Tesla has removed safety drivers from some of their robotaxis"

Why doesn't Tesla has as many empty Robotaxis as Waymo has cars? Because Robotaxis aren't good enough. The entire Robotaxi rollout is a very carefully choreographed smoke and mirrors show to inflate Tesla share price. Tesla doesn't even have the permits to operate Robotaxis in California and probably never will because they are actually stricter vs Texas.

by UltraSane

4/18/2026 at 8:23:13 PM

> Tesla doesn't even have the permits to operate Robotaxis in California and probably never will because they are actually stricter vs Texas.

I'd like to note that in just a few months, the goalposts have moved from "Tesla will never get rid of their safety drivers in their Robotaxis" to "Tesla will never operate Robotaxis in California."

As before, would you like to bet on your prediction? I'm willing to wager you any amount up to $1,000 that before the end of 2028, Tesla will have Robotaxis in California, available to the public, without a safety driver. Note that this may not require a permit for deployment, just driverless testing, as that is how Waymo currently operates.[1]

December 31st, 2028 may seem like a long ways off, but it's much sooner than never.

1. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto...

by ggreer

4/19/2026 at 2:41:26 PM

"Tesla will never get rid of their safety drivers in their Robotaxis"

They didn't though, they just moved them to a chase car. Because Elon Musk is an incredibly successful con artist. Why isn't every robotaxi driverless and open to the public like Waymo is? Tesla is so far behind Waymo it is laughable.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/musk-t...

Tesla touts California robotaxis but does nothing to get permits

Documenting driverless testing miles is critical for a series of permits

Tesla logged zero miles last year in California for the sixth straight year

Waymo documented 13 million miles over a decade before securing driverless ride-hailing permit

by UltraSane

4/19/2026 at 9:01:01 PM

You can find videos of people taking Robotaxis without any chase car.[1] Though the use of chase cars shouldn't be surprising. Waymo did a similar thing with their self-driving rollout. They started with a small number of cars in suburbs in Arizona, with safety drivers. As they built up trust in the system, they gradually removed constraints and oversight. Now they have autonomous vehicles in complicated environments (such as San Francisco) with remote human assistance for when the software can't handle something. (Sometimes these remote operators are overwhelmed, such as when the power goes out in San Francisco and too many Waymos request human intervention.[2]) One should expect Tesla to follow the same path of gradually removing supervision as they build trust in their autonomous systems.

Will you take the bet or not?

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1qqlpgg/un...

2. https://waymo.com/blog/2025/12/autonomously-navigating-the-r...

by ggreer

4/19/2026 at 11:23:33 PM

Hey what do you know its that same guy David Moss that has nothing but pro-Tesla posts providing the evidence. Strange how it always seems to be the same few people over and over here.

by vel0city

4/20/2026 at 4:37:53 AM

Unless you think the video is faked, I'm not sure what your point is. It's an example of an unsupervised Robotaxi trip without any chase car. Of course you're going to get a selection effect where enthusiasts are mostly the ones posting these videos, especially in the case where they're recording behind the vehicle to prove there is no chase car. Normal people just take Waymo/Robotaxi/Zoox without recording and uploading their trip.

by ggreer

4/18/2026 at 4:09:11 PM

Tesla is on fire, took them 12 years to have few cars drive from point A to point B (not always safe but progress nonetheless)… suprised their P/E is not in the many thousands with this amazing feat they accomplished, well ahead of all of their competitors

by bdangubic

4/18/2026 at 4:04:16 PM

> Very few people take the time to drive thousands of miles in a short period of time

Luckily that's not a requirement here. If your 1 example, your 1 datapoint isn't a fluke, then someone driving 100 miles should have 1/10th the interruptions as someone driving 1000 miles.

If you have to intervene 0 times in 1000 miles, and that isn't an outler, then we should expect to see 0 intervention required in all 100 mile drives, all 10 mile drives, and all 1 mile drives. Unless it's a fluke.

Statistics > 1 anecdotal post about a car on the car company CEO's website.

by ImPostingOnHN

4/18/2026 at 6:28:58 AM

Happily, I don't care about Waymo. I do care about statistical competency among the population. Everyone should know that a single data point is irrelevant, as it could be noise just as easily as it could be signal. It is statistically insignificant.

You can actually do the math to find out the sample size you would need to derive a statistically significant conclusion. No need to be incredulous at my answer to your question: it's basic statistics.

As an aside: in general, if you find yourself going to a single person for data and expertise, you might be falling victim to a personality cult.

by ImPostingOnHN

4/18/2026 at 8:35:15 PM

The reason I'm using a single example is because we don't have comparable statistics across manufacturers, and because it's enough to demonstrate my point about Tesla's autonomous capabilities versus other brands. I am saying the same thing you are: Examples exist of FSD being used for thousands of consecutive miles without intervention. But you cannot find such examples for any other consumer car brand today. If Blue Cruise, Super Cruise, Mercedes-Benz Driver Assistance, or any other technology went similar distances without any human intervention, then it would be accurate to claim that, "Other brands have had self driving features for years now. Some even operate at a higher level of automation." But we don't have such examples, so it's not accurate to make such claims.

Nowhere in this thread am I claiming that FSD is safe enough to be used without human oversight. I'm also not claiming that Tesla has delivered on their promises (they obviously haven't). I am comparing the capabilities of autonomous systems using evidence that is publicly available. Since we don't have comparable statistics across manufacturers or some sort of standardized road test, I think "miles between human interventions" is a useful measure of autonomous capabilities. That's what has been used to demonstrate safety of other autonomous systems, and I see no good reason why such a metric should be ignored in this case.

by ggreer

4/19/2026 at 7:14:47 AM

> Since we don't have comparable statistics across manufacturers or some sort of standardized road test

We don't have data on the intervention rate of Teslas, either. So far all you've presented is a single, non-statistically-significant anecdote.

>I think "miles between human interventions" is a useful measure of autonomous capabilities.

Exactly. What is Tesla's average miles between human intervention? The anecdote you presented is maybe 1/1000th of the minimum data you would need (of randomly selected participants) to answer that question. 1,000 is a bold claim, it requires statistically significant evidence

by ImPostingOnHN

4/17/2026 at 10:21:02 PM

More than a random Twitter feed and a news post from a company which is known to spread lies, that's for sure.

by vel0city

4/17/2026 at 10:53:47 PM

How about if a guy who wrote an article titled Five Things My Roomba Does Better Than My Tesla[1] later drove across the country without intervening?[2] Unless all three people in the car are lying, it seems like an independent example of going thousands of miles without intervening.

1. https://www.thedrive.com/opinion/40604/five-things-my-roomba...

2. https://www.thedrive.com/news/a-tesla-actually-drove-itself-...

by ggreer

4/17/2026 at 11:15:46 PM

> Both are deeply knowledgeable about Tesla’s Full-Self Driving suite and Roy stressed that he couldn’t have completed the trip without them.

Totally fully self driving even though you need not one, not two, but three autonomous driving experts with you. And be sure to have a second car with you when your first autonomous vehicle strands you. Sure sounds like a reliable system ready for the masses to use on public roadways!

by vel0city

4/17/2026 at 11:38:17 PM

I think you misread the article. The stranding was because they left a place without one of the passengers and had to go back to get him. It had nothing to do with autonomous driving. I’m not sure what help the autonomous driving experts added beyond recommending cleaning the cameras at each stop. None of them work for Tesla, and it’s not like they could tweak the software along the way.

I’m not making any claims about FSD’s safety or how ready it is for mass usage on public roads. I am trying to figure out what information would convince you that someone has used FSD for thousands of miles without intervening. Does this count or not? If not, why?

by ggreer

4/18/2026 at 12:42:18 AM

> I am trying to figure out what information would convince you that someone has used FSD for thousands of miles without intervening.

I never doubted it, I just said I don't trust things Tesla states on their website (they're objectively known to lie, especially when it comes to videos about their self driving) and I don't trust randos on Twitter.

I will say though, the people in the article have a vested interest in pushing a pro-AV agenda. But in the end, sure, I guess they probably did have that trip they say they did.

It doesn't surprise me people managed to go thousands of miles without disengaging especially since it sounds like this isn't their first time trying (flip a coin enough and you'll possibly get heads several times in a row after all) and that's nearly all highway miles. I've personally driven many shots on a non-Tesla well over 150 miles hands-free without any disengagements on a system that attempts less than what Tesla does. The only disengagements for most of those drives were to exit the highway to charge. You pick a route that has easy to get to chargers, you don't venture off the highways much, sure sounds possible to me. In the end though I don't personally see it as that radical of a difference on a road trip. On a nearly 300mi drive I probably directly operated the car like 5 of those miles total. Is risking people's lives at the surface street parts with beta software worth that last little bit?

Note, that's several thousand miles of no disengagements on a long, pre-planned cross country drive. Not 10,000 miles of driving around in a city and having all the other randomness of life peppered in. So what are we really measuring here? I'm sure we could get it to 500,000mi or more on a closed course if we wanted to. Although, after saying that, they still haven't on the Las Vegas Loop, so...maybe not?

And people act like this is delivering what Elon promised about cross-country autonomous driving. But it's not. They still needed the driver there in the car, paying attention the whole way. They still needed to charge it themselves. So we're a decade late and we still don't actually have what was promised.

by vel0city

4/18/2026 at 1:58:43 AM

If you never doubted it, then why did you call me crazy to believe it, then want something more convincing than, “a random Twitter feed and a news post from a company which is known to spread lies”? It’s quite annoying to spend time digging up information only to be gaslit about the need to provide it.

Regarding the rest of your comment: Again, nowhere in this thread am I making any claims about FSD’s safety or how ready it is for mass usage on public roads. I am not saying it lives up to the promises or that it has been delivered on schedule. You are making arguments against beliefs I do not hold. That is a waste of time for both of us.

The point I am making is that other brands have zero examples of consumers using them on public roads without intervention for thousands of consecutive miles, so claiming they are equivalent or better in capability to FSD is not accurate.

by ggreer

4/18/2026 at 11:29:31 AM

> why did you call me crazy to believe it,

I called you crazy for citing a website known for publishing lies.

> only to be gaslit about the need to provide it

I never asked for you to go digging. Your own personal drive to stan for Tesla did that.

> claiming they are equivalent or better in capability to FSD is not accurate.

I'm not saying they're 100% exactly the same. I'm just saying spending 5 miles actually operating the car on a several hundred mile road trip is pretty much the same as not touching the wheel at all to me if I'm still ultimately responsible for the operation of the car. In the end I had to completely pay attention the whole way. Until it's actually (Unsupervised) it's really mostly the same to me. Especially since I can't really trust the not-full not-self driving to not get into an accident or kill someone with me as the one responsible.

In the end they're both level 2 systems.

by vel0city

4/17/2026 at 11:35:43 PM

That’s a terribly low bar for evidence - it’s deciding to pick whatever self-reported data confirms your priors. Far more than 3 individuals believed that Ivermectin cured them of COVID - I, however, chose to not believe them and get vaccinated instead. FWIW, my experience with FSD on HW4 is that I don’t need to intervene roughly for a 100ish miles on a clear day on a freeway without construction or accidents. That’s good enough for me to subscribe during roadtrips, but Musk and his legion of supporters is overselling capabilities - as usual.

by tmule

4/18/2026 at 12:26:21 AM

One key difference in that analogy is that covid can clear up on its own, allowing people to convince themselves that some quackery worked. But cars don’t drive themselves thousands of miles, so anyone claiming their car did so (and posting photos of their FSD stats) would have to be deliberately lying.

Have Tesla and its fanboys overstated FSD’s capabilities? Absolutely. But I’m not saying that FSD is currently good enough that one should expect to have thousands of miles between interventions. I’m trying to convince someone that it has been done. The reason I’m trying to do this is because that same cannot be said for any other self-driving technology available in a consumer vehicle today, so claiming that FSD is no better than competing offerings is not accurate. FSD overhyped? Sure. Late? Extremely. Fraudulent, bordering on criminal? I could see that. But it’s still in a league of its own in terms of what it can do.

by ggreer

4/18/2026 at 4:59:08 AM

cryptographically signed timestamped raw log data.

by UltraSane

4/17/2026 at 9:25:30 PM

Ok, try it yourself with a new HW4 and you will see.

by electriclove

4/17/2026 at 9:42:47 PM

I've ridden in Teslas many times operating in "FSD" (read: not fully, and not self, driving), nearly every time its made some kind of moving violation including nearly hitting a pedestrian. No thanks.

I heard the same thing in 2019, HW3 solved all the issues, it finally just works as advertised. That was after HW2 was guaranteed to ship with all the hardware needed for FSD a decade ago, for real this time.

I'll probably wait for HW5, then you'll tell me its really there. This time it won't even run people over, and it actually stops at stop signs more than just 98% of the time.

Personally I try and avoid systems that drive people in front of trains. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMqTmOTtft4

by vel0city

4/18/2026 at 8:22:12 AM

> over 10,000 miles without intervening, including a cross-country trip.

You realize that a cross-country trip makes that achievement weaker, not stronger, right? That's just a bunch of highway driving, which is the easiest to automate and will have you racking up a lot of miles quickly.

City driving is the real test, not driving a milion miles in a straight line.

by Mawr

4/18/2026 at 11:16:19 AM

I am interested to see how Tesla is going to drive in Dutch cities.

I will give car makers the benefit of the doubt: it is difficult to simulate real traffic. You can't do real life tests with teenagers on bicycles.

by expedition32

4/17/2026 at 11:08:41 PM

This is so far removed from my personal lived experience that it's almost laughable. The auto park on Tesla is an accident waiting to happen.

by bastawhiz

4/18/2026 at 10:39:12 PM

Yeah, why don't people talk about how my model s tried to drive itself into oncoming traffic more? Not just anyone can drive themself into oncoming traffic.

But like, actually the reason is that the cars consistently make dangerous decisions when they're not being used as "glorified cruise control", and the sensors mean they only even get to do that during "perfect driving conditions"

by xracy

4/17/2026 at 8:42:49 PM

He should have been touching the wheel. Tesla nags you if you don't exert varying force on the wheel, so it's not possible for him to not touch the wheel during the trip unless he was using some sort of defeat device.

by freeAgent

4/17/2026 at 9:02:36 PM

It does for Autosteer but not for FSD, which only requires that you look ahead at the road and if you do so then you don't need to touch the wheel at all.

by satvikpendem

4/17/2026 at 8:47:44 PM

It only nags you if the cabin-facing camera can't tell whether you're keeping your eyes on the road now.

by aojdwhsd

4/17/2026 at 10:25:45 PM

Which is why you put a sticker over it.

by andrewinardeer

4/17/2026 at 11:30:00 PM

I've had this experience with Subarus. And it's fucking annoying. If the car is tracking where it should go, why do I need to put force on the wheel? It's like I have to keep steering it slightly the wrong way so that it fights back against me just a bit to keep itself in the lane. Otherwise, it thinks my hands aren't on the wheel and bitches the whole time. My hands ARE on the wheel, there's just been zero reason for me to put any turning force on it.

by olyjohn

4/17/2026 at 8:46:41 PM

It barely nags at you if at all. I haven't seen it nag at me in a long time when I take my hand off the wheel. I assume it's because of the camera watching the driver that they allow it but I'm not sure.

by morder

4/17/2026 at 9:02:29 PM

That’s no longer true. As long as the car has a cabin camera (which has been the case since the Model 3 came out), it will only nag you if it can’t see your eyes or you’re clearly distracted.

by ggreer

4/17/2026 at 10:50:43 PM

I'm literally ready to pay cash for a Tesla, once they make one that doesn't have a steering wheel at all.

If I can't go to sleep lying down on the seat as a sole occupant, it's not yet self driving.

by shrubble

4/18/2026 at 5:14:38 AM

They announced a Tesla with no steering wheel a while ago. Don't tell me that was vaporware.

by platevoltage

4/17/2026 at 11:45:28 PM

The big issue is that Tesla has sold all of their cars with an option for FSD until a month or two ago, but everything before 2023 is basically confirmed never going to actually have FSD because the latest software cannot run on the hardware in the old cars.

What's worse is this is all going to end up happening again when HW5 comes out and all of the HW4 cars start getting a trimmed down version of the FSD software from HW5, like HW3 is currently receiving.

by Rohansi

4/18/2026 at 2:43:16 AM

God bless you dear

by Rohansi

4/17/2026 at 9:38:58 PM

he literally didn't touch the wheel or the pedals the whole time

I thought the diver was supposed to keep hands on the wheel in case consuming hits wrong.

That's why Tesla fans buy those weighted gizmos to fool the computer into thinking they're still holding the steering wheel.

by reaperducer

4/17/2026 at 10:04:17 PM

not anymore as long as you're looking at the road.

by iknowstuff

4/18/2026 at 9:39:01 PM

Ehh I made the same trip (HW4, latest update), it’s not particularly impressive. The car gives up under harsh sunlight, tailgates big trucks leading to rock chips, switched lanes without signaling, sometimes would teeter on lane change and then swerve back.

by outlore

4/17/2026 at 8:48:35 PM

You experienced Time in a Flatcircle

by brcmthrowaway

4/17/2026 at 9:19:54 PM

I feel bad for all the other people on the road your friend endangered

by miltonlost

4/17/2026 at 9:04:12 PM

Not a Tesla fan or owner here, but I tested a friend's HW3 Model Y on FSD (Supervised) and it was completely competent. Not sure why EU owners seem to not have it.

by vostrocity

4/17/2026 at 9:22:19 PM

FSD on HW3 is a significantly worse experience. And no FSD version currently available to owners allows you to ignore the road. It's only the robotaxi software that can be classified as "self-driving".

Also the EU adopted laws restricting self-driving behavior, making FSD far less capable there. For example, the software cannot exert a lateral acceleration of more than 3m/sec^2. It must also cancel lane changes after 5 seconds after the start of engaging the turn signal. Tesla gimped their self-driving features in the EU & Australia because of this.[1]

It’s only the latest version of FSD (which only runs on HW4) that lacks these restrictions and has been approved for use in the Netherlands. Even then, it requires you to pay attention to the road, so it's not what he paid for.

1. https://electrek.co/2019/05/17/tesla-nerfs-autopilot-europe-...

by ggreer

4/17/2026 at 8:50:48 PM

this is funny because roadstar is no longer coming ever and they paid even more deposit there.

by kingleopold

4/17/2026 at 11:01:52 PM

Is the amount of money they'd have to refund if they just refunded everyone prohibitive, or is it more of an image/messaging thing, admitting you, erm, took them for a ride? It's clear those customers are never going to get it.

by jrochkind1

4/17/2026 at 10:45:21 PM

> 3,000 owners from 29 countries signed up — representing over €6 million in FSD purchases.

The math doesn't work out. It should be \euro 20,000,000 in FSD purchases, no?

by mlmonkey

4/18/2026 at 7:41:35 AM

I have HW3 in Canada and I use FSD everyday. It regularly drives me for my entire commute with no interventions.

The fact that FSD in Europe has been massively delayed is mostly the fault of regulators.

Sad but true.

by enslavedrobot

4/18/2026 at 10:53:31 AM

Tesla are responsible for ensuring that their products meet the relevant regulations.

by roryirvine

4/17/2026 at 11:15:25 PM

So many people worshipped the jobs distortion field but it was nothing compared to the gaslighting Elon has been able to do with Tesla. The man promised things he couldn’t deliver over and over and over again and investors are it up turning his company into a meme stock devoid of any kind of fundamentals.

by gigatexal

4/17/2026 at 8:42:19 PM

Telsa appears to be doing crime. The EU does have clas action lawsuits. I expect one way or another Elon will have to issue refunds.

by josefritzishere

4/17/2026 at 9:08:05 PM

Australia is also launching a class action.

by a10c

4/17/2026 at 11:34:18 PM

[dead]

by deckar01

4/17/2026 at 9:06:37 PM

[dead]

by s5300

4/17/2026 at 9:19:08 PM

I think the government is going to have to get involved for FSD from any manufacturer to actually take place.

by daft_pink

4/17/2026 at 10:26:33 PM

The article is about a Dutch owner of an older Tesla who bought with the intention of using FSD (supervised) with HW3 but the government has not approved it's use for that model so the person can't use it.

You can use FSD with HW3 in other countries like Canada.

by dmix

4/17/2026 at 10:28:50 PM

There is something uncanny about the way you've phrased your comment, as if to suggest nothing about what Tesla did was wrong.

by acron0

4/17/2026 at 10:39:49 PM

I was responding to the HN headline which doesn't clarify the context in which FSD is not available because I know people don't read articles. He could and should try to sue Tesla for the $6k refund which the article already says he's trying to do.

by dmix

4/18/2026 at 6:13:14 AM

[flagged]

by Freedumbs