Tesla changes meaning of 'Full Self-Driving', gives up on promise of autonomy
113 comments
·September 5, 2025dlcarrier
dreamcompiler
Not gonna happen as long as Musk is CEO. He's hard over on a vision-only approach without lidar or radar, and it won't work. Companies like Waymo that use these sensors and understand sensor fusion are already eating Tesla's lunch. Tesla will never catch up with vision alone.
Rohansi
While I don't think vision-only is hopeless (it works for human drivers) the cameras on Teslas are not at all reliable enough for FSD. They have little to no redundancy and only the forward facing camera can (barely) clean itself. Even if they got their vision-only FSD to work nicely it'll need another hardware revision to resolve this.
moogly
> While I don't think vision-only is hopeless (it works for human drivers)
I guess you don't drive? You use more senses than just vision when driving a car.
SalmoShalazar
Such utter drivel. A camera is not the equivalent of human eyes and sensory processing, let alone an entire human being engaging with the physical world.
formercoder
Humans drive without LIDAR. Why can’t robots?
cannonpr
Because human vision has very little in common with camera vision and is a far more advanced sensor, on a far more advanced platform (ability to scan and pivot etc), with a lot more compute available to it.
phire
Why tie your hands behind your back?
LIDAR based self-driving cars will always massively exceed the safety and performance of vision-only self driving cars.
Current Tesla cameras+computer vision is nowhere near as good as humans. But LIDAR based self-driving cars already have way better situational awareness in many scenarios. They are way closer to actually delivering.
systemswizard
Because our eyes work better than the cheap cameras Tesla uses?
apparent
The human processing unit understands semantics much better than the Tesla's processing unit. This helps avoid what humans would consider stupid mistakes, but which might be very tricky for Teslas to reliably avoid.
dreamcompiler
Chimpanzees have binocular color vision with similar acuity to humans. Yet we don't let them drive taxis. Why?
randerson
Even if they could: Why settle for a car that is only as good as a human when the competitors are making cars that are better than a human?
Waterluvian
They can. One day. But nobody can just will it to be today.
nkrisc
Well these robots can’t.
dzhiurgis
So robotaxi trial thats happening already is some sort of rendering, ai slop and rides we see aren’t real?
crooked-v
So does anyone who previously bought it on claims that actual full self-driving would be "coming soon" get refunds?
garbagewoman
Hopefully not. They might learn a lesson from the experience.
blackoil
Hmm, you want to penalize company and teach a lesson to customers,so give the money to Ford shareholders.
jeffbee
> Maybe they'll reach level 4 or higher automation
There is little to suggest that Tesla is any closer to level 4 automation than Nabisco is. The Dojo supercomputer that was going to get them there? Never existed.
standardUser
What does Waymo lack in your opinion to not be considered "full self driving"?
The persistent problem seems to be severe weather, but the gap between the weather a human shouldn't drive in and weather a robot can't drive in will only get smaller. In the end, the reason to own a self-driven vehicle may come down to how many severe weather days you have to endure in your locale.
mkl
Waymo is very restricted on the locations it drives (limit parts of limited cities, I think no freeways still), and uses remote operators to make decisions in unusual situations and when it gets stuck. This article from last year has quite a bit of information: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/05/on-self-driving-waymo-i...
panarky
Waymo never allows a remote human to drive the car. If it gets stuck, a remote operator can assess the situation and tell the car where it should go, but all driving is always handled locally by the onboard system in the vehicle.
Interesting that Waymo now operates just fine in SF fog, and is expanding to Seattle (rain) and Denver (snow and ice).
phire
Geofencing and occasional human override meets the definition of "Level 4 self driving". Especially when it's a remote human override.
But is Level 4 enough to count as "Full Self Driving"? I'd argue it really depends on how big the geofence area is, and how rare interventions are. A car that can drive on 95% of public roads might as well be FSD from the perspective of the average drive, even if it falls short of being Level 5 (which requires zero geofencing and zero human intervention).
zer00eyz
Waymo has been testing freeway driving for a bit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/comments/1gsv4d7/waymo_spotte...
> and uses remote operators to make decisions in unusual situations and when it gets stuck.
This is why its limited markets and areas of service: connectivity for this sort of thing matters. Your robotaxi crashing cause the human backup lost 5g connectivity is gonna be a real real bad look. NO one is talking about their intervention stats. IF they were good I would assume that someone would publish them for marketing reasons.
standardUser
All cars were once restricted in the locations they could drive. EVs are restricted today. I don't see why universal access is a requirement for a commercially viable autonomous taxi service, which is what Waymo is currently. And the need for human operators seems obvious for any business, no matter how autonomous, let alone a business operating in a cutting edge and frankly dangerous space.
gerdesj
No one does FSD yet - properly.
It initially seems mad that a human, inside the box can outperform the "finest" efforts of a multi zillion dollar company. The human has all their sensors inside the box and most of them stymied by the non transparent parts. Bad weather makes it worse.
However, look at the sensors and compute being deployed on cars. Its all minimums and cost focused - basically MVP, with deaths as a costed variable in an equation.
A car could have cameras with views everywhere for optical, LIDAR, RADAR, even a form of SONAR if it can be useful, microwave and way more. Accellerometers and all sorts too, all feeding into a model.
As a driver, I've come up with strategies such as "look left, listen right". I'm British so drive on the left and sit on the right side of my car. When turning right and I have the window wound down, I can watch the left for a gap and listen for cars to the right. I use it as a negative and never a positive - so if I see a gap on the left and I hear a car to my right, I stay put. If I see a gap to the left but hear no sound on my right, I turn my head to confirm that there is a space and do a final quick go/no go (which involves another check left and right). This strategy saves quite a lot of head swings and if done properly is safe.
I now drive an EV: One year so far - a Seic MG4, with cameras on all four sides, that I can't record from but can use. It has lane assist (so lateral control, which craps out on many A road sections but is fine on motorway class roads) and cruise control that will keep a safe distance from other vehicles (that works well on most roads and very well on motorways, there are restrictions).
Recently I was driving and a really heavy rain shower hit as I was overtaking a lorry. I immediately dived back into lane one, behind the lorry and put cruise on. I could just see the edge white line, so I dealt with left/right and the car sorted out forward/backward. I can easily deal with both but its quite nice to be able carefully abrogate responsibilities.
panick21_
Put a Waymo on random road in the world, can it drive it?
Kye
That's the real issue. If "can navigate roads" is enough then we've had full self-driving for a while. There needs to be some base level of general purpose capability or it's just a neat regional curiosity.
standardUser
For a couple decades you couldn't even bring your cell phone anywhere in the world and use it. Transformational technologies don't have to be available universally and simultaneously to be viable. Even when the gas car was created you couldn't use it anywhere that didn't have gasoline and paved roads, plus a mechanic and access to parts.
cryptoz
Many humans couldn't.
an0malous
How have they gotten away with such obvious misadvertising for this long? It’s undeniably misled customers and inflated their stock value
dreamcompiler
Normally the Board of Directors would fire any CEO that destroyed as much of the company's value as Musk has. But Tesla's board is full of Musk syncophants and family members who refuse to stand up to him.
breve
The board doesn't care. They got theirs:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/business/tesla-stock-sale...
https://www.afr.com/technology/life-changing-wealth-stopped-...
utyop22
Lmao disgusting really.
utyop22
Poor corporate governance is rife.
Eddy_Viscosity2
Who was going to stop them from lying?
vlovich123
SEC and FTC would be obvious candidates who historically would do this. States also have the ability to prosecute this via UDAP (unfair and deceptive practices) laws.
Probably Tesla being the only major domestic EV manufacturer + historically Musk not wading into politics + Musk/Tesla being widely popular for a time is probably why no one has gone after him. Not sure how this changes going forward with Musk being a very polarizing figure now.
1over137
>SEC and FTC would be obvious candidates who historically would do this.
Yeah, historically, as in: before many people here were born. It's been so long since SEC and FTC did such things.
randallsquared
The previous two administrations (Trump I and Biden) being somewhat anti-Tesla or anti-Musk was some part of what prompted Musk to get into politics in the first place. Given the Biden admin's hostility, I would have expected the SEC and FTC to have been directed to do all they could against him within bounds, and so my first guess would be that they did, in fact, do everything justifiable.
barbazoo
Maybe that’s what happens in late stage capitalism. The billionaires get so powerful that they become untouchable. He’s already shown that he uses his fortune to steer political outcomes.
jesenpaul
They made tons of money on the Scam of the Decade™ from Oct 2016 (See their "Driver is just there for legal reasons" video) to Apr 2024 (when they officially changed it to Supervised FSD) and now its not even that.
pm90
> Since 2016, Tesla has claimed that all its vehicles in production would be capable of achieving unsupervised self-driving capability.
> CEO Elon Musk has claimed that it would happen by the end of every year since 2018.
Even as a Tesla owner, it baffles me how rational adults can take this conman seriously.
lotsofpulp
It’s a winning strategy. See who won the presidential election recently.
RyanShook
Looking forward to the class action on this one…
greyface-
Tesla has binding arbitration that prohibits class actions.
jaggs
One problem might be that American driving is not exactly... well great, is it? Roads are generally too straight and driving tests too soft. And for some weird reason, many US drivers seem to have a poor sense of situational awareness.
The result is it looks like many drivers are unaware of the benefits of defensive driving. Take that all into account and safe 'full self driving' may be tricky to achieve?
asdff
What I don't understand about this is that to my experience being driven around in friends teslas, its already there. It really seems like legalese vs technical capability. The damn thing can drive with no input and even find a parking spot and park itself. I mean where are we even moving the goalpost at this point? Because there's been some accidents its not valid? The question is how that compares to the accident rate of human drivers not that there should be an expectation of zero accidents ever.
AlotOfReading
The word "driving" has multiple, partially overlapping meanings. You're using it in a very informal sense to mean "I don't have to touch the controls much". Power to you for using whatever definitions you feel like.
Other people, most importantly your local driving laws, use driving as a technical term to refer to tasks done by the entity that's ultimately responsible for the safety of the entire system. The human remains the driver in this definition, even if they've engaged FSD. They are not in a Waymo. If you're interested in specific technical verbiage, you should look at SAE J3016 (the infamous "levels" standard), which many vehicle codes incorporate.
One of the critical differences between your informal definition is whether you can stop paying attention to the road and remain safe. With your definition, it's possible have a system where you're not "driving", but you still have a responsibility to react instantaneously to dangerous road events after hours of of inaction. Very few humans can reliably do that. It's not a great way to communicate the responsibilities people have in a safety-critical task they do every day.
breve
Tesla set their own goal posts.
In 2016 Tesla claimed every Tesla car being produced had "the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver": https://web.archive.org/web/20161020091022/https://tesla.com...
It was a lie then and remains a lie now.
ChrisArchitect
Earlier:
Tesla’s autonomous driving claims might be coming to an end [video]
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starchild3001
Feels like Musk should step down from the CEO role. The company hasn’t really delivered on its big promises: no real self-driving, Cybertruck turned into a flop, the affordable Tesla never materialized. Model S was revolutionary, but Model 3 is basically a cheaper version of that design, and in the last decade there hasn’t been a comparable breakthrough. Innovation seems stalled.
At this point, Tesla looks less like a disruptive startup and more like a large-cap company struggling to find its next act. Musk still runs it like a scrappy startup, but you can’t operate a trillion-dollar business with the same playbook. He’d probably be better off going back to building something new from scratch and letting someone else run Tesla like the large company it already is.
xpe
This is not a heavily researched comment, but it seems to me that the Model 3 is relatively affordable, at least compared to available options at the time. It depends on your point of comparison: there is a lot of competition for sure. The M3 was successful to a good degree, don’t you think? I mean, we should put a number on it so we’re not just comparing feels. The Model Y sells well too, doesn’t at least until the DOGE insanity.
starchild3001
Here's some heavy research for you -- Model 3 is competing with the likes of BMW, Audi etc. That's not considered the "affordable" tier. It's called luxury. Here's a comparison:
https://www.truecar.com/compare/bmw-3-series-vs-tesla-model-...
derefr
Daily reminder that Telsa is not — nor was ever intended to be — a car company. Tesla is fundamentally an "energy generation and storage" (battery/supercapacitor) company. Given Tesla's fundamentals (the types of assets they own, the logistics they've built out), the Powerwall and Megapack are closer to Tesla's core product than the cars are. (And they also make a bunch of other battery-ish things that have no consumer names, just MIL-SPEC procurement codes.)
Yes, right now car sales make up 78% of Tesla's revenue. But cars have 17% margins. The energy-storage division, currently at 10% of revenue, has more like 30% margins. And the car sales are falling as the battery sales ramp up.
The cars were always a B2C bootstrap play for Tesla, to build out the factories it needed to sell grid-scale batteries (and things like military UAV batteries) under large enterprise B2B contracts. Which is why Tesla is pushing the "car narrative" less and less over time, seeming to fade into B2C irrelevancy — all their marketing and sales is gradually pivoting to B2B outreach.
JimDabell
> Telsa is not — nor was ever intended to be — a car company. Tesla is fundamentally an "energy generation and storage" (battery/supercapacitor) company.
> The cars were always a B2C bootstrap play for Tesla, to build out the factories it needed to sell grid-scale batteries
This seems like revisionist history. They called their company Tesla Motors, not Tesla Energy, after all.
This is a blog post from the founder and CEO about their first energy play. It seems clear that their first energy product was an unintended byproduct of the Roadster, they worried about it being a distraction from their core car business, but they decided to go ahead with it because they saw it as a way to strengthen their car business.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090814225814/http://www.teslam...
utyop22
Are you an investor of Tesla by any chance?
derefr
Nope. Don't even own a car. Military-industrial-complexes are just my special interest. And apparently Musk's, too. (What do grid-scale batteries, rockets, data-satellite constellations, and tunnel boring machines have in common? They're all products/services that can be — and already are being — sold to multiple allied nations' militaries. AFAICT, this is 90% of the reason Trump can't fully cut ties with the guy.)
DoesntMatter22
They went from no revenue to the 9th most valuable company in the world under him. No vehicle sales to having the best selling vehicles in the world.
They are still profitable, have very little debt and a ton of money into the bank.
Every company has hits and misses. Bezos started before Musk and still hasn't gotten his rockets into orbit.
guluarte
I thought we would have almost AGI by now? https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1858747684972048695
This looks to me like they are acknowledging that their claims were premature, possibly due to claims of false advertising, but are otherwise carrying forward as they were.
Maybe they'll reach level 4 or higher automation, and will be able to claim full self driving, but like fusion power and post-singularity AI, it seems to be one of those things where the closer we get to it, the further away it is.