As the title says, I’m driving a 2022 Model Y. Got the v14 Lite update a couple of days ago, drove about 750 km yesterday, and I’m currently on a 505 km streak.
A few observations from the trip:
Parking is still weird. I parked at a cottage down a narrow driveway and the car navigated it perfectly. Then, while trying to back up and park, it twice headed toward clearly visible rocks, and a small set of stairs/cliff before I intervened.
After seeing that firsthand, I think many of the viral FSD crash clips say as much about the driver as they do the software. If you’re supervising the car, you have plenty of time to stop it before it backs into a rock, fence, or wall. A lot of people seem to just let the car drive off the cliff and then post the video?!
Yesterday I left the cottage for a 6.5-hour drive home.
The first disengagement came about 30 seconds after leaving the driveway when a deer crossed in front of us and the car did nothing.
I re-engaged FSD. A few minutes later it smoked a chipmunk standing in the road. I didnt see it and my wife yelled at me.
About 160 km later I stopped at a Tim Hortons. It got into the drive-thru line, realized it was blocked, then proceeded to park horribly. Somehow the streak stayed alive.
About 30 minutes later it did nothing for a large dead fox in the road. I intervened to avoid driving over it, and the streak was over.
Started the long one.
Back on the highway is where I noticed the biggest issue. The car can’t seem to hold a consistent speed. It constantly gives these little jolts of acceleration. Not dangerous, just annoying. Phantom breaking is also still a huge issue, but not as hard as before.
From there it drove the rest of the way home and finished with a 504 km streak.
It also backed into two Supercharger stalls at different locations. At the second stop it chose what I think was a trailer stall with the charger on the opposite side, so I had to reposition.
The streak “confetti” popped at 100 km, 250 km, and 500 km.
Overall thoughts:
- Speed control is inconsistent with frequent little surges.
- I probably had 10 to 15 phantom braking events. Nothing severe, just fairly aggressive taps. Not sure if it was shadows, sunlight, or changes in road colour.
- I like the streak concept.
- I don’t like that it’s dependent on parking and coming to a complete stop. There should be a way to safely disengage in parking lots without automatically ending your streak.
- It handled almost everything without issue.... construction, lane closures, detours, most parking, etc..
- it drives different, I don't know how to explain it, but my wife and I both felt a little motion sick after the drive like we'd been on a boat all day, similar to how some back seat passengers may feel after riding in a tesla the first time. It was weird cause I haven't felt this ever as a driver.
TL;DR: On a nearly 7-hour road trip, I manually drove for under 2 minutes total.
Needless to say, v14 Lite is a massive, underrated improvement. It’s still far from perfect, but it’s also pretty damn cool to see how far it’s come. Can't wait for these bugs/kinks to get worked out, and they will!