I Tested Tesla's Latest FSD Update and Here's What Happened

Hi, this is Rob Greenlee from Behind the Wheel again, and I am in a Tesla Model 3, and it's a 2022 model year. And I just last night got the download, the FSD Supervise version 12.4.3 of the Full Self-Driving software. And as you can see on the screen, the release notes of the software. So what I was hoping to do is just kind of take it out for just the very first drive with the new upgrade to the software and give you a little bit of an experience. I'm, I'm currently sitting in my garage and, and I was going to see if I could find a destination that, that would be an interesting place to go to. So I was thinking I could go to Costco and see if I could find what the new experience is of the Full Self-Driving software from Tesla. So let's go ahead and see what the car is capable of doing. So I'm going to activate the, the car and see if it will back out of the garage. I'm not sure if it will or not, but We shall see. I guess it does not back out of the garage quite yet, so I'm going to have to do that manually. So hopefully at some point the software will have the ability to kind of start your trip, uh, right from your garage is what I'm hoping that eventually will be possible. So let's go ahead and back out of the garage. And, um, get going on our trip and just find out what the new update to the software is capable of doing. So let me close the garage door and we can kind of proceed. So I'm going to back out to the street, and in the past I've had to back out all the way out to the street and then activate the, uh, the drive function So I'll go ahead and do that, and I would imagine now it'll activate. Okay, I had to actually hit it twice, so I'm not quite sure why it's hesitating. So let's, let's kill it and start over here. Hmm, not quite sure what's going on here. Okay, it's deciding what to do here. Well, that was a little bit of a glitch in what my prior experience has been with the prior version. I believe it's the 3.6 version. And it's still a little bit slow and kind of initiating. There's no real cars around. So we're driving down the road here, and hopefully it'll find a path here to take us to Costco all on its own. I'm going to be kind of keeping an eye on the road, and supposedly this version doesn't have what's called kind of the nagging that it has to touch the steering wheel, and I've been typically doing the kind of speed control to activate the steering wheel instead of trying to tug on it, pull the steering wheel around. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work on that. But I've had a, I think, generally a positive experience with the full self-driving since I've been a subscriber to the the software, but there has been prior to this version, and we'll see if this version is any different, but there has been many times when I've had to, you know, disrupt or do an intervention into the software to make it make a right choice in a particular situation. So I'm not touching the steering wheel, hopefully, on this entire trip, as long as I keep an eye on the road. So we'll see how the car manages this as we go down the road. I know there is a lot of people putting out full self-driving videos like this about their, their particular experiences with the software, and I think, you know, they've been generally pretty positive I would think mostly, but I have seen, and hopefully this version is a little bit different. It didn't actually have a terrific start to get started with here the first time the software works. And maybe there's a little bit of learning that has to go into it to actually make sure that it is fully integrated into the neural processor that this car has in it. So hopefully the light will proceed here quickly. And now this is also an interesting kind of place for the car as well, because off to the left you'll see a bunch of weeds growing, and you can maybe see it on the screen to some degree, but what it will do is it'll creep up and it will try and peek around the corner. And sometimes it takes quite a bit of time to get into the intersection because frankly, it can't see. And that's not necessarily a fault of the car. It's just occasionally there will be areas where the car will have a difficult time seeing around the corner. And as a human, I have a difficult time seeing around the corner as well at this particular place to turn. And so it'll be interesting to see how maybe it manages that situation a little bit differently and maybe responds a little quicker. So we shall see how this, this works out. But I've been a Tesla owner since about mid-2022. I've had terrific experience with my Model 3. But it's had its little glitches. I have to say, I mean, it's not been a perfect vehicle. It's occasionally every other night or something like that, the driver's door will just magically just kind of like pop open all on its own. So, and it's sometimes hard to understand, you know, that's obviously a little glitch in the software that exists. So hopefully this light will change here soon and we'll be able to proceed, but I've had a good time with the Model 3 and I would definitely recommend it to anyone. I've been a long-time kind of user of electric vehicles. I had a Nissan Leaf back in 2011, which was really the first mass-produced electric vehicle to ever be manufactured, and that car was much more difficult to drive than this one is. This one is definitely a much, much better electric vehicle, hands down, maybe like 5,000% better car. So, but I think it's a terrific car, and I'm not quite sure why this light is taking so long to activate. I'm going to have to interrupt. This light seems to be stuck. All right, I had to resume. The stoplight I was at seemed to have been stuck. So anyway, I'm back to the Full Self-Driving going to Costco here, and hopefully it'll share a little bit of an experience. So one thing I've had to do a lot of adjustment is the speed of the car. And sometimes, at least in the past, it's made quite a few mistakes around seeing certain signs that show, let's say, like Route 60 or something like that. And it will interpret those as the speed limit being 60 miles an hour. It looked like we just went past a speed limit sign, 45, and it did capture that one. But occasionally I'll see it make a mistake where it will be in like a, like a 25-mile-an-hour zone or something like that, and it will capture the, the route number sign as the speed limit. And sometimes that, that is out of whack. So we seem to be on track now with with the speed limit. So I'm at 45 and the maximum speed limit is 45. And it looks like it's going to look for a left turn here to head up the hill, and we'll see what it does to the speed as it gets onto this roadway. It's going up the hill. Okay, it's maintaining 45 miles an hour in what it looks like is a is a residential area, so let's see if it changes to 25. Here's a speed limit sign of 25. Looks like it dropped it down, so I can go ahead if I want to, I can bump that up to let's say 30 if I want to go 5 miles an hour over the speed limit, and that would, that would be okay. It doesn't look like it's actually gone up, 30. It's working there to get there. So let's see if I can get it up to 35 miles an hour. I can go 10 miles an hour over the actual speed limit if it will actually do that. In the prior version of the, of the kind of self-driving kind of auto-steer capability of the platform, you couldn't go any higher than 5 miles an hour. Speed limit. So it appears now you have more control over whether or not you're going to speed in a speed zone. So looks like it's, it's doing a good job. It says slow down, so I'll back it off a little bit, get it down to 30 miles an hour, and it seems to adjust to that quite well. So we seem to be doing well so far except for the, the early issue I had at that stoplight. It always seems something always seems to go haywire whenever I'm recording and doing a video on this. Doesn't always go perfect. Okay, so we just had a little bit of a hiccup there. I'm not quite sure what that was where it kind of like lost power and then it accelerated again. So Let me go ahead and raise the speed up to 35 again and see what that experience— okay, it's a speed limit of 30 now through here, so conceivably I could go up to 35. Let's see what it does through this. We're going to come up on a stop sign here in a second. Now these are These are residential roads. These are not wide lanes. They do have oncoming traffic coming on them, and I'm not traveling at a high rate of speed or anything like that, but the shoulder off to the right is pretty close, pretty tight. There's not a lot of overlap that can be had with the steering of the vehicle, so it has to be pretty tight. It does seem to be doing a good job of that. So let's say We're coming up on a speed hump ahead, and let's see if it recognizes it and slows down. And it didn't. I'm not quite sure why it didn't recognize that. Past versions have recognized kind of like speed humps. Didn't recognize it. There was clear signs came up, so in some ways I think we maybe done a little bit of a regression on some of the roadway detection. They didn't actually see it picking up the actual road, like speed bump sorts of the car. So that's definitely something that is missing in this new upgrade version that was in the prior versions. So I'm not sure what caused that to happen, but you know, this is a, this is a progression. And I think Tesla is going to need to really get a lot more precise about these things if they want to have a robotaxi type of a capability. Okay. So we just had a little bit of a hesitation there. I'm not quite sure what that was. I do have a car right behind me. There was another little hesitation. I'm not quite sure where that's coming from. I don't know if it's detecting shadows or something like that or what it might be doing. Well, let's see how it's progressing here. I haven't seen too many little faux pas yet, but there has definitely been a little bit of a regression on the speed humps type of situation where it used to detect those on the screen and it would slow down. This particular version so far has not shown that it will actually slow down for a speedup, so you have to really kind of keep an eye on that if you're using the, the 4.3 version. So, you know, you kind of have to give it a, give it a shot, right? You have to let it go to find out if it's going to respond, and sometimes you can't react fast enough to slow it down. Some of the speed humps can be pretty big, so that could be a little bit of a factor. And if the speed hump is not as big, maybe it doesn't pick it up, which, which may be the case here. So it's, it's about a 20-minute drive to get to Costco, so looks like we're at about 18 minutes and we had a little bit of a slow start. So it looks like people went. It looks like it's trying to take a free right. We'll see if it manages this. It's at a red light and it seems to be hesitating a little bit. Go, stop, go, stop, go. Okay, now it's going on a green light. So it didn't take the actual free right turn that it had the ability to do. So we're coming up on another intersection where it's going to need to turn left, and we'll see if it— just let you know too, I'm out in Connecticut. I'm kind of north of New Haven, up in, up in the area in Connecticut. Not that it makes a big difference, but I, I don't believe that there's a lot of Tesla vehicles up in this part of the state. I, I don't typically see a lot of Tesla cars out, out here. Um, so it's kind of got itself out in the middle of the intersection, um, to some degree trying to turn left. Um, didn't get itself in a great place here, and that's definitely a step back in its abilities. Thank goodness it didn't get out any further into the intersection, but I'm not sure it did the right thing here. I think we seem to be clear of all vehicles, so at least we're safe. It just It's over the crosswalk area, as you can see on the screen. Okay, now it turned left, so it's taking a pretty fast turn. That was really a quick turn that it took. I don't know that it needed to be that quick. Yeah, I have heard some complaints that the car will accelerate a little bit too quickly. Off of a stoplight or off of a stop sign. And it's proven to be a little bit jarring to passengers too that are in the vehicle. It's not a smooth thing. And it's also not as smooth on the braking also sometimes. Sometimes it will maintain quite a gap between the vehicles by braking very, very quickly. And really creating another jarring experience. So it's, um, interesting what it's showing in the vehicle in front. It's almost like it's showing that the vehicle is looking to turn, but it wasn't. So that was a little bit of a misinterpretation of what the vehicle in front of us was doing. So yes, I've seen some degradations already in this very quick drive. Hopefully it will get better by the use of the software and that the neural net in the car will actually learn. You know, it is fresh software, so I don't know if there's learnings that go on in each of the vehicles in addition to what the code is, if the neural net is entirely in the vehicle itself, which means that the vehicle needs to be trained? I don't really know the answer to that question. It's an interesting one to think about. And I do know that the processor in this vehicle is capable of doing AI-type things. So is it able to learn in the vehicle separate from up in the cloud? Is the bigger question, does it have the memory in the vehicle? I don't know the answer to that. What the memory in the vehicle is to store data like that. I am signed up to share data, video data, with Tesla for its, its training, its video training. So you can see this is a 30-mile-an-hour zone, and it was going right at 30, and I can up it to 35., and we're not too far out from Costco here. We're getting close. It hasn't been an unsafe drive. Okay, so here we go, slowing down again. I had it set at 35, but we are coming up on a tight turn here, so I set it to 30, and it seems to accelerate up to 30. And then let's say I go up to 35. So we're about, looks like about 2.2 miles away from Costco. So this, this Costco is up in the Waterbury area of— oh, it says I I needed to pay attention. So I was looking down at my, my mobile app on my phone and it detected that I was— because the phone had fallen over. That actually is the controlling of the video camera that's going on. It's a mobile app. So the camera detected that I wasn't paying attention to the road and it threw up a little, please pay attention to the road, because I haven't had to touch the steering wheel. At all this trip, so which has been great. So here, let me raise it up to 40 because I have cars backing up behind me. Okay, we're back recording. I'm just pulling into Costco. I had my camera got a little overheated and shut down on me, so This is— we're finally pulling into Costco, into the parking lot. And let's see what that experience is with the Full Self-Driving. It's coming up to an intersection going into Costco. And let's see how it manages this. There's a car right in front of it, and then it kind of went into it. That was a little tight going around that car. So it's going up to the parking lot at Costco. So let's see how it manages this part of the journey. It says, auto navigation complete. So really what I've been waiting for is the car being able to pull into a parking lot like this and actually find a parking spot and do that, you know, without me having to activate anything in the car. I don't believe that they've managed to make that process work quite yet where they kind of connected the the journey to a, a location while at the same time navigating, actually finding a parking stall, which I'm not quite sure. So, okay, so I had to intervene, as they say, and now I'm, I'm driving to find a place to park. So let's see if I can activate the parking process in the car. I don't know that if it's going to actually do that. Park. Let's see. Not going to a park. Let's see if it will find a place to park. Supposedly I have that software activated in the car. Maybe I just don't know how to use it. Okay, here's, here's a place to park right there. Let's start. Let's auto park. It's going to back up. So it seems to be doing a good job of backing up into a parking stall. Backing in— this is actually the first time I've seen the car actually back up, so I would imagine So it successfully did that. So if I wanted to leave, then I guess I would just hit home. Since I'm not actually going into Costco, just wanted to navigate here so I had the ability to make a video about it. So let me, um, go ahead and— so I, I activated a new destination. So I'm going to put it in drive and activate it and see what the car does. Does the car— oh, it pulled right in front of a car. That was not a, a smooth move where it pulled out and didn't even see an oncoming vehicle. I had to intervene in that experience. It should have seen the vehicle since it was right in front of the car. So it looks like we have a pedestrian on the left that's doing something. So we still have some bugs. We still, I'm not quite sure, you know, I think we're getting there, but there's still some, mistakes that I'm not sure that I would trust a robotaxi to navigate safely. That could have been a situation back there where the Tesla would have gotten into an accident. So let's see, it's navigating exiting the parking lot. So it has a stop sign in front of it and it's crooked. So let's see if it gets itself straightened out here a little bit. Yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's a little crooked on the road. Not quite sure. I think it did a better job in past versions of coming out of the parking lot. It's pretty obvious where to go. It's extremely cautious in a situation that's pretty clear and the cars are— okay. So here we are leaving the intersection. So believe me, I'm a fan of Tesla. I don't like to talk about it in a negative light, but I, I do think that, you know, I think it's the right thing to give critical feedback on it since this is such an important technology that is being worked on. It's so important to Tesla. I am a Tesla shareholder and have been one since like 2012, so I've been really following the company very closely. And, uh, I, I have to say I'm a little bit disappointed in the software to some degree at this point, that we're not a little further along given the Robotaxi event coming up in just a few weeks. So I'm sure there are other versions that are coming in their kind of versioning. That was another kind of overly accelerating experience with the car. That'll be jarring for any kind of a robotaxi passenger to have that kind of acceleration. I mean, these cars are like rocket ships already, but I'm not sure the car needs to, in normal driving situations, needs to fully take advantage of that fast acceleration. I know that's probably coming from its video training data that it has. So that may be where all that's coming from. Just to let you know too, I'm actually recording this in an Insta360 video camera that's actually only using one of the two lenses that the, that the camera has. So that really, really accounts for kind of this kind of wide angle, you know, it's 180-degree view of the, of the driving of the vehicle. I'm not using the 360-degree view capability of this camera. Just because it's, it's not really necessary for this kind of an experience to have that. So I wonder if I can— well, I don't want to look at the screen because it's going to give me a flag, but it does seem to be doing, doing a good job of driving. It's, it's been a while since I've done a True Behind the Wheel video on my YouTube channel at Rob Greenlee. So if you're seeing this, I would love it if you would subscribe to my channel. I do a bunch of other podcasts about podcasting and, and have done many, many EV and hybrid vehicles going back many, many years, like 15, 16 years back to some of the earliest EVs that were around that were almost like golf carts of sorts in the early days. So the car is being very cautious right here because there was a pedestrian on the left. So as we proceed here, you can kind of see I haven't really had to touch the string wheel at all, so it definitely passes that test. It has been very strict on my paying attention. The video camera up here monitors where my eyes are and actually where my hands are too. It's keeping a close eye on what I'm doing. So you can kind of see in the rearview mirror, I believe, the camera. It's hanging down from the glass ceiling just in front of the screen. Okay, it looks like the car wants to go around this truck. But it, it didn't find enough room to actually do it. So let's go up to 35 here through a 30 zone since I'll probably have a pileup of cars behind me if I don't go a little faster than the speed limit. So let's go up to 40 and see if it— yeah, it goes straight up to 40. Which isn't extremely fast through here, but it is kind of a residential area. But it is a nice road that has good space, good gaps on the left and the right. So we'll see what the next version of the full self-driving FSD— this is, this is 12. 4.3, which is the latest update. I just got it last night, and this is July 11th. So I know that there's been— okay, it just braked for some reason. I think it was because it was an intersection. Not quite sure why it did, because there were no vehicles at the intersection. So we have a little bit of kind of phantom stuff going on in the neural net here. It appears, but we're getting there. But, um, but anyway, I think I'm going to wrap this up. Uh, it's definitely been a long enough video experience with full self-driving. I appreciate you being here. My name is Rob Greenlee, and this is Behind the Wheel at the @RobGreenlee YouTube channel on YouTube. And like I said, I appreciate you being here with me. And taking my, my first, uh, drive with 12.4.3, which is the, the latest public version of the Full Self-Driving software from Tesla. And I'm driving a Model 3 2022 Long Range version of the car. It's got about 19,000 miles on it. It's been a terrific car for me, but I appreciate you being here with me, and I will Hopefully I'll be able to get up another video on another trip with Full Self-Driving, and hopefully it'll be a, a little bit less of a troubled, uh, experience. So anyway, but I'm having a good time with it, and it's nice to have a car that drives itself. So thank you so much for being here, and subscribe to my channel. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.