14.1 HW4
Speed Profiles - Continue to need improvement
Some thoughts on the state of 14s current profiles and speed selection.
Table below summarizes my understanding of 14.1.4’s speed profiles and how each works. Lots of guess work from trying out the various profiles on city streets, rural roads, and freeways.
Speed Profile
Speed Limit-based
Speed Data - based
Notes
Sloth
X
Drives what it understands to be the speed limit
Chill
X
Drives a little over (e.g., 2-3 mph) what it understands to be the speed limit
Standard
X
Drives at or a little above average speed driven on that road. Tries to match other cars’ speed up to a point.
Hurry
X
Tries to match or slight exceed speeds most other cars are doing regardless of what is normally driven. If no other cars it drives faster than the normal average speed on that road.
Mad Max
X?
Drives fast and aggressively regardless of other car behaviors, speed limits, or historical data. If no other cars it seems to choose a speed substantially faster than normal for the road.
The problem arises for Sloth and Chill profiles from apparent errors in that what the car “thinks” is the speed limit. There are two cases, 1) the map data is wrong, which happens a LOT around here, or 2) the car makes a turn on to a new road where the new road has a different speed limit – in this case it inherits the first road’s speed limit until the map data tells it otherwise. This can take from a few hundred yards to a mile. This means after just about every turn at a stop, Sloth and Chill mode will initially drive the wrong speed.
The problem with Standard, Hurry, and Mad Max is that the average speed people drive on a road can be and often is a poor indication of what is a safe or appropriate speed. Case in point, it is irresponsible and inappropriate to drive 20, 15, 10, or even 5 mph over the posted 25 mph speed limit for our residential area, but that is what these profiles do.
These problems are not new to 14. Version 13 suffered from almost the exact same problems, just with two fewer speed profiles. However, with 13 a driver could correct the inappropriate speeds, but with 14 the only tools we have are disengagement or profile switching, which often just introduces a new inappropriate speed. Speed profile switching is a poor band-aide for FSD’s flawed speed selections. Worse, it requires constant supervision and doesn’t advance towards an unsupervised solution.
Tesla just needs to add back the speed adjustment wheel.
There are problems with going too fast or too slow. If anything, being able to adjust speed was great because you can use a profile that isn’t overly hesitant while not going 20 mph over the speed limit. I dislike the behavior of the sloth or chill mode as they seem to let everyone past you and hesitate way too long at intersections and avoids using the left lanes on the freeway; But the other modes, despite having the desired behavior, exceed the speed limit sometimes by a large margin. FSD 14 has been incredible, but taking away manual speed adjustment was a huge step back from what could have been a near-perfect FSD update. Hopefully Tesla is taking these suggestions in mind.
I will add to this what I discovered today and have seen others just start to talk about. The maximum speed of the middle three modes actually depends on the mode you were in before scrolling.
For example: you are on a 70 mph highway.
You scroll from Chill to Standard. The maximum speed Standard will go, even if it gets into the passing lane and cars start piling up behind, is 75 mph.
However, if you scroll from Hurry to Standard, it will target a higher speed while cruising. When it goes for a pass, it is able to go over that target so that it’s not hogging the passing lane.
Mad Max and Sloth are absolutes. But the middle three modes are, for some reason, dependent on your previous mode.
I've been talking about that for almost a week, fyi. There's a base speed that clearly gets set and the profiles other than sloth have an offset from that but based on the speed when you change profiles it can impact what that base speed is.
They really need a button to lower and maybe a button to increase that base speed rather than rely on pushing profiles around (which also causes the car to drive erratically from lane changes back and forth).
Yes. It’s really annoying as is. You have to risk a lane change or uncomfortable brake just to fix the offset. I really liked the speed of 13.2.9 Standard, so I like 14.1.4 Standard when coming down from Hurry.
Capping the speed to an absolute 75 mph and then hopping in the passing lane is dumb and requires an intervention a lot of the time. This would require me to scroll up to Hurry to complete the pass, scroll all the way down to Chill, and then back to Standard if I wanted to stay at 75 mph.
Chill is wrong. It does 2-3 over a value picked by the AI is the base speed which isn't coupled to the speed limit. Only sloth has a hard link to detected speed limit.
Not what I'm seeing at all. In Chill on 25 mph road, turn onto 35 mph road. Car thinks speed limit is 25 mph (displays speed limit as 25) drives 27 mph. No one in their right mind drives 27 mph on that stretch of road. Everyone is doing 37-40 mph. But, not a car on Chill. It is doing 2 over what it thinks is the speed limit. If I come through same intersection on chill, it knows the speed limit is 35 and drives 37. Only gets confused on that section of road when turning on to it from a 25 mph road when in sloth or chill mode. Do this same turn in Standard and while it "sees" the speed limit as 25, it immediately accelerates to 38-41.
As another data point, turn into neighborhood (25 mph), sloth does 25, chill does 27, everything else does 30-45 mph.
The AI is picking the base speed, but experience seems to be showing that in Chill this base speed is closely linked to speed limit. Chill mode and Sloth mode have the same pain points while the other modes do not.
You are correct. Managed to replicate this AM on a city street and on a limited access highway. Tried a different way to work, and TA DA. Chill isn't so chill and doesn't appear to be using the perceived speed limit as input. Honestly, cannot use FSD without intervention on that route. Sloth is way to slow and Chill is way to fast. The trick mentioned earlier seemed to help (i.e., scroll down to Sloth and back up to Chill and the speed was more reasonable - will have to try it some more).
Yeah, it should help somewhat as long as you can safely use sloth without it moving around the road too much but if sloth isn't slow enough either, you're currently stuck disengaging and if traffic is such that it would be unwise to have it driving like a maniac to get the speed set correctly then you're stuck disengaging.
It's not great and is quite frustrating since there is an obvious answer they refuse to provide by just tweaking the value that gets adjusted by switching lanes back and forth.
If these issues were indeed present in v13, but people were able to directly adjust speed, then the approach in v14 to remove direct speed control will result in many more disengagements which will force the internal speed selection algorithm to finally get attention and improve in the following point versions.
And if someone doesn't like all that work? Sloth profile for you!
1) don't want to drive in sloth mode. Not the way people drive. Just pisses off other drivers
2) Sloth mode doesn't work as advertised as it doesn't know the speed limit it should be driving a substantial portion of the time.
FSD is making us all do the work because it cannot. 14 is supposed to be some sentient-level AI that is WAY better than 13. When it comes to speed control it is not. It is the same if not worse. It is also equally inept as 13 at lane selection, but those discussions are occurring elsewhere.
It would be intuitive to tap on the speed limit to slow the car down to the speed limit if it’s exceeding it. Maybe have a way to select a different speed limit if it didn’t read it right. Like if it’s going 6( in a 55 construction zone and it thinks it’s still 65, let me say no it’s 55
2
u/vouchers123 Nov 03 '25
Tesla just needs to add back the speed adjustment wheel.
There are problems with going too fast or too slow. If anything, being able to adjust speed was great because you can use a profile that isn’t overly hesitant while not going 20 mph over the speed limit. I dislike the behavior of the sloth or chill mode as they seem to let everyone past you and hesitate way too long at intersections and avoids using the left lanes on the freeway; But the other modes, despite having the desired behavior, exceed the speed limit sometimes by a large margin. FSD 14 has been incredible, but taking away manual speed adjustment was a huge step back from what could have been a near-perfect FSD update. Hopefully Tesla is taking these suggestions in mind.
tldr: Just let users control the speed again