Back when Autopilot launched, in consumer cars, it was pretty unique. But the market has moved on significantly, and basic Steering Assist/Full-Speed-Range Automatic Cruise Control, are pretty universal features today.
My only complaint is that there's an over-eager PID loop with lane keeping. If I want to pass a transport truck and want to kind of edge to the left of my lane when doing so, it will keep trying to compensate, which I can feel in the wheel, so I compensate for as well. And if I let go of the wheel and let it win, it suddenly flings me towards the right side of the lane.
I suspect this is because it isn't programmed to think that I'm making adjustments, it probably just thinks there's some weirdness in the vehicle dynamics/road characteristics that requires extra compensation.
It's essentially that Subaru's lane system actually has two levels: it has lane keeping where it's just trying to keep you inside the lines, and then on top of that it also has lane centering which is pretty much what it says.
Just a note for you or anyone reading who has a recent Subaru and doesn't know already: if you find the centering really bothersome, you should be able to be able to go into the settings on the instrument cluster display (up/down arrows at the lower left behind the wheel, toggle it until you get to the "hold for settings" option), find the Eyesight settings, and turn off lane centering. It will still try to keep you inside the lane markers but won't try to park you right in the center of the lane. In that mode, it's more like the Honda Sensing system I had on my 2016 Civic.
I go back and forth a bit on it but mostly keep it in lane centering mode now - I've gotten used to how it positions the car in the lane, and it lets me focus more on what's going on around me than micromanaging lane position and such.
Same with Hyundai except they call them "Lane Keeping Assist" (LKA) and "Lane Following Assist" (LFA) and I have trouble remembering which one centers you and which one just keeps you from leaving the lane.
To me just based on the names I'd have expected keeping to be the one that actively positions you (it keeps you centered) and following to the one that just reacts when you are going to depart the lane (it keeps you following the lane).
Mostly now I just remember that the one that comes on automatically any time I'm going 40+ mph is the reactive one, and the one that I have to explicitly turn on is the centering one (although both come on automatically on certain highways based on data from the navigation system).
But there was one thing that was quite bad, similar to yours. While passing a semi I pulled it to the left side and it actually yanked us right so hard and then over-corrected once again. Super scary moment, the only issue of the whole trip, but basically never passed with it on again.
Maybe I just need more time with it but, my toyota had adaptive cruise and slammed on the brakes one time and I did not like it. On a one lane highway the car a decent ways in front of me slowed down and started moving into the shoulder to take a right turn into a driveway. As i came up on him he was almost all the way over, just his driver side wheels on the line. I moved to the far side of the lane with plenty of room to clear without slowing down and my toyota slammed on the brakes going from 65 to like 40 and it scared the shit out of me. It was a greater level of surprise and fear than I’d experienced in probably the last 20k miles of driving and was completely avoidable had I been using dumb cruise control.
Driving my mom’s Honda insight with lane assist also made me nervous when I would be near the edge of a lane on purpose and it would move the wheel on its own.
I’m not opposed to fully automated driving, but what I don’t want is to be in a situation where I need to remain alert and responsible for managing a system that does the driving. I’d rather just do the driving myself. I’ve driven for almost 20 years now, some of that professionally, and it’s second nature at this point and doesn’t require active thought outside navigating new routes and finding parking. Managing the system requires more effort for me.
I now drive a standard 33 year old truck and it’s bliss. No software updates, no bs, just a machine that takes my inputs and gets me from A to B. That said, without airbags, crumple zones and abs I’d have to get something more modern if there were children in the picture.
I don't want 'nap in the backseat while it drives me places', I want this. A bit of a personality keeping me on track and tidy. I'll keep my hands on the wheel but yeah, my attention is spared to watch for idiots, and I think that's good.
It's absolutely true that the rest of the industry is rolling out new features. But people are fooling themselves if they genuinely think it's catching up. Tesla is way, way ahead here among consumer auto vendors, and frankly at parity with Waymo in the autonomy space.
They've also made an inexplicably poor pricing decision in this case that is worth talking about. But no, your Subaru isn't a meaningful competitor.
Tesla is a car company. Every car company is a competitor to Tesla.
As a legacy EV manufacturer, Tesla is struggling to compete in the current car market. Tesla's sales have declined for the last two years.
It's why they're having to squeeze fewer customers for more revenue.
Waymos have been driving around autonomously for years; meanwhile Tesla taxis have a human in the car ready to activate a kill switch at all times. Therefore, your statement is objectively false.
EDIT: Oops, this isn't quite correct anymore — as of two days ago, in a geofenced area of Austin, Tesla has moved the safety person to a follower car: https://xcancel.com/JoeTegtmeyer/status/2014410572226322794#....
Funny, I totally read this intro the opposite way of what you went on to argue.
This is a pretty boneheaded business decision on Tesla's part. But their technology remains clearly superior.
By the way, FSD ("full self-driving") is just as inaccurately named as Autopilot. I don't know why Tesla can't call their technology, like, CyberDrive or something else that isn't glaringly inaccurate.
People had a feature for free, now they don’t, because Tesla wants money.
“But it’s better…” only if you pay. If you don’t, still gone.
What else matters?
I see nothing wrong with them offering a cheap(er) FSD option. I object to them removing existing features to force adoption.
No features are being removed from existing cars. The policy is about what they sell on new ones.
Previously you got the Corolla feature set included with your vehicle purchase, Enhanced Autopilot for a fee which was a step above that, and then FSD subscription which was a step-up again.
Now Tesla has downgraded the base experience to include no Steering Assist at all, and no longer offers Enhanced Autopilot. So you get two choices: No Steering Assist or FSD.
2. Elon's Trillion Dollar Payout is tied to a certain number of FSD Subscriptions.
3. Some consumers were sold that they would get hardware upgrades for FSD. I'm pretty sure Tesla would like to minimize that, and I expect incentives for those people to purchase new vehicle without FSD.
4. Subscriptions drive our economy, I don't know the details but it seems like every company wants subscriptions over one time purchases.
I honestly don't think they want a lot of people with lifetime FSD, it's disappearing without a lot of news.
That wording is misleading because so far as I can tell, that payout is in tranches, and the FSD subscriptions milestone is only tied to one of the tranches. Therefore it's not as if 1 trillion dollars is riding on whether he gets enough FSD subscriptions, only 1/12th of that.
https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001318605/0...
That explains things.
In theory, subscriptions are cheaper for users as well when done right and it works better with how people are compensated. But as usual, greed consumes all and if everything is a bill, that's more ways to eat at your long term wealth.
In other words: you will own nothing and like it.
Every person I know wants a subscription, too. Who wouldn’t want a nest egg throwing off passive income?
Anything you can do to operationalize cash flows is a huge boon to continuity of business operations
I don't argue that they're great from a predatory business perspective. The consistency you state comes on the back of negative value for customers though. Particularly now that everything is a subscription. People are worn TF out by keeping track of the people hoovering their money away.
<https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/pardon-the-expression/to...>
You mean consumer? I genuinely cannot understand why anyone would buy a car or a bed or a fridge that requires a subscription. That's beyond me.
I do understand why companies want to screw consumers, obviously.
There's a huge car finance market where people do exactly that. How much they pay a finance company monthly vs. how much they pay the manufacturer monthly makes little difference to them. It's all about the monthly fee and what they get in return for it.
If I'm buying something that has recurring costs to deliver services, I feel better if I'm covering those costs, so I'm buying something with a sustainable business model.
Subscription service for heated seats - outrageous.
Subscription service for premium, ad-free mapping - reasonable.
The price is high, but it's not unique to Tesla. Ford has Blue Cruise, which is about $500/year.
People can, however, opt for openpilot/comma (https://comma.ai/openpilot), which random Youtubers tested and say it's about as good as Tesla's FSD, but has a simple one time fee of $1K But whether you want to trust open source is up to you.
I also have a Lexus ES 2025, I bought the Comma for it and it works better than Tesla’s AutoPilot (the thing they’re taking away new new Teslas). AutoPilot isn’t great to begin with, I kinda always hated it. But I do like cars that can drive themselves when I have long road trips and wanna be able to look at work. Comma makes that completely doable on the Lexus.
So you don't get even that in a Tesla without (now) ponying up $$? Something that's a standard feature in my non cloud connected (or connectable!) "so last century" fossil fuel vehicle?
This last week they had a guy who had completely passed out in his car and was fast asleep at the wheel. A state trooper pulled up alongside it and could see the guy slumped over his wheel. Apparently the car was essentially weaving back and forth between the lane lines because the car had LKAS enabled, effectively keeping the car from driving off the road.
The state trooper followed the car for several miles trying to decide what he should do. He tried several times by running his lights and sirens, honking, etc to no avail. He finally found a safe spot and successfully pitted the car to a stop. During the pit, the man suddenly woke up - for obvious reasons.
They later found out he had been working 22 hours straight and then was driving to his GF's house several hours away for the weekend and was just exhausted and fell asleep at the wheel.
As for the safety feature. I inherited (literally) a second car that's 10 years older than the primary one. You get used to LKAS. I was driving a long distance in the older one while somewhat overtired and had several rumble strip excursions that would not have happened in the LKAS-equipped car. And for the asleep guy in the parent post, it may have made the difference between still being alive and dead in head-on collision or rollover.
If the weight of your foot was somehow enough to push the pedal though, you could certainly keep going.
If you’re using it the way you’re supposed to and giving real steering input then it helps you stay within the lines. So it’s less effort for you and it helps mitigate large wind gusts and such.
But basically lane keeping is absolutely not meant to steer for you.
No such thing as a safe spot to PIT someone, ever, let alone while they're asleep at the wheel. This is a great example of why people hate all cops, anyone with two brain cells to rub together would get in front of the car and gradually slow to a stop.
With a car on lane keeping / cruise control you could slow down in front of it all the way to a stop and it will gladly stop behind you.
> What a total idiot in the police car.
It's important to make sure we have all the context before making a judgement like this. My rule of thumb is that if I think something is obviously stupid, I'm probably missing something.
Blue Cruise, and I assume Tesla's FSD as well, will simply change the lane and go around you.
If the guy had a simple LKAS and adaptive cruise control on, then yes, you're right.
If it’s a simple enough system maybe it would just keep going the same speed no matter what until it hit you.
Maybe the average cop has better driving skills than I'm giving them credit for, but...I doubt it...
A certain segment of the public, plus cops themselves (having significant overlap with that segment), love it though, because they enjoy seeing non-compliance met with life-endangering levels of force and can't understand why any of us wouldn't enjoy it unless we want more crime or something.
So a bunch of suspects who weren't, car chase aside, any imminent danger to anyone, and their possibly-unwilling passengers, end up dead or life-alteringly injured... and so do plenty of people who had nothing to do with any of it. Often over what was originally just e.g. property crime.
I’ve been paying the monthly for a while. Very worth it to me.
IMO adaptive crude control that works down to 0MPH is still the sweet spot.
But for driving in slow traffic with no passing lane for the next half hour (Highway 7 between Perth and Marmora, for Ontarians) it's a godsend. Just let it handle it and chill.
Second, I have a 2025 Model 3, and even with the latest v14.2.2 FSD I had an intervention rate of roughly every ten miles in Washington DC/VA suburbs. I shudder to think what it would do if I didn't pay attention, so I don't think it's an improvement over me driving myself.
- Is it unsupervised?
- Has legal liability shifted as a result of the system being the driver?
Because I feel like the answer needs to be "yes" for this claim to be accurate. If the answer isn't "yes," then you're still meant to be fully engaged with driving and are liable for any accidents that occur.
I believe you, but occasionally it will try to kill you.
I have a 2014 car that's connectable but no driver assistance; I had a 2017 (delivered mid 2016) with lane keeping and emergency braking which seemed pretty new and exciting, and it's connectable, all I would need to do is pay a big annual fee and also setup a 3g CDMA network. Couldn't do much with either if it's connected; I pulled the 3g modem from the 2014 when it was convenient cause I was worried it was using power while off.
Not that lane keeping needs a connection, just that I'm surprised they put it on a car without a modem.
I used it a couple of times, but then I stopped; for me, as a driver/passenger, it has very little value. Yes, maybe I can lower my attention from 100% to 95%, but it does not make much difference: I need to keep my hands on the wheel, it disengages at random (for me) times.
True autopilot is very different.
Heck, a cheap base model Maza 3 I rented had lane keep assist.
Tesla only stands to lose by gatekeeping what's now a basic feature behind a paywall.
I miss having a dumb cruise control.
Screw the subscriptions. I don't care how much the shareholders want them.
Agreed. The investor requirements of any company mean nothing to me as the consumer.
This is an example of what I am talking about.
It's a silly example, but you can think of it as buying a house and the ceiling lights requiring a subscription to turn on.
As an aside, I wonder how long this can keep up before it begins affecting laws around theft and property damage if the person operating, storing, insuring, and maintaining the physical objects don't contractually own them. Is Mercedes a victim if the LKAS camera gets damaged or stolen, rather than you?
Are you sure they bought the ML Models?
The Hardware is inside because it's required for the emergency lane keeping, but I wouldn't be surprised if the OEMs would have a deal with the supplier where they are paid more if this feature gets enabled
Every young adult I know uses a subscription for everything I used to buy. Even though they own the device on which they consume it.
Spotify for cd's, Netflix-Disney-Amazon for vhs and dvd's, Udemy-Masterclass for books.
That was my original main complaint with Tesla and why I distrusted them so much before Elon publicly lost the plot.
Even with Autopilot it was clear to me they were far more willing to force the risks of their systems on all other drivers on the road then the legacy auto makers who were much more cautious about testing things extremely thoroughly first. All those early videos of people climbing in the backs of their cars while they were driving down the highway? To me that was proof they couldn’t be trusted with public safety.
I daily a 30 year old car. There exists a sweet spot of reliability, safety, and comfort (probably the early-mid 2000s) that in theory, you should never have to buy a vehicle outside of, newer or older. There will always be clean old cars in good shape you can buy, you don't need a new vehicle.
Unless you can't buy gasoline anymore. But that's still quite a long ways away imo.
The specs are pretty good but then you don’t really own it, you get limitations on what you can use it for, you get rent seeking and walled gardens everywhere. Even if you’re paying you get ads and get tracked. Updates make products worse more often than not.
What are you excited about? AI slop?
A little credit please?! I don't use AI anything. I code my stuff the old fashioned way with nested if/else statements that make you cry trying to follow along. And damn the coworker that interrupts your debugging asking if you got their email or not.
Waymo on the other hand, I trust it with my life on a weekly basis and have never had cause for concern (fingers crossed I didn't just jinx it).
We don't use FSD, we don't use Autopilot either.
But I'll be goddamed if he tries to take away something I paid for.
I haven't been keeping up with the progress in this space. Last I heard, Benz introduced some sort of self driving feature AND accepted full liability for it (whereas Tesla does not). How does Benz's self driving compare to Teslas?
https://www.electrive.com/2026/01/12/mercedes-pauses-level-3...
I drove Mercedes and BMW L3 offering. Both had a really restricted ODD (Operational Design Domain) for it to be of much use outside high traffic situations on an Autobahn. It was restricted to good weather and speeds of around 60km/h. Basic all conditions under which their set of sensors and CPUs would work optimally.
But that was 2021 technology. L4 level of autonomy will be in the market during the next 4/5 years, no doubt. And that will be a game changer for anyone driving any significant amount of time. Sleeping, reading, watching a movie or just working on the laptop will be possible. And the manufacturer will take full responsibility of the driving while the functions are active.
I was honestly stunned by how far the tech has come. It basically drove us door to door without a single intervention.
The article doesn’t explain what happens to simple lane leeping. Surely it should be free like in any other car (like my Volvo).
Tesla cannot take anything away that was on the Monroney sticker. This includes AP.
New Teslas will now only have "Traffic Aware Cruise Control" as standard without lane assist, i.e. keeps pace with traffic and can stop/start, but user still has to provide steering input.
Under the new 2026 pricing structure, Autosteer has been removed. *New vehicles will now only ship with Traffic-Aware Cruise Control*. Buyers who want the vehicle to steer itself on highways must now pay for the software that was once standard.
https://electrek.co/2026/01/23/tesla-cuts-standard-autopilot...
I can't shake the feeling of trusting an already complex machine to yet another layer of complexity through software.
---
The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.
— Scotty, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
While unfortunate for consumers, it cleans up the offerings. For four years, I didn't buy FSD because Autopilot was good enough to cover highway driving and I couldn't justify $99/month for the "last mile". If you strip out Autopilot and given the latest FSD, I would 100% buy the FSD subscription.
Removing the lifetime purchase option also simplified my mental model. Before, I was always stressed that if I bought a few months, loved FSD, and then bought the lifetime, I would have "wasted" those few months. Plus, every month I owned the car yet didn't buy lifetime FSD made it worth "less" to me: I'd eventually sell the car, so I'd missed out on those few months of usage.
I do wish Tesla offered a price lock: so long as you maintain your FSD subscription, your price is guaranteed for 5 years. Otherwise, it does feel scary: I spend 50k on a car for its FSD and over time, they jack the price to $200 or $500/month. Also, if they jack up FSD prices and then lower base car prices, your Tesla's value decreases effectively, which feels even worse.
It doesn't contain maps or context of the roads, it is just Auto-Steer + Lane-Change + Full-Range Cruise Control under one brand-umbrella. Mostly useful on the Motorways/Freeways, and commonly found in competitor's vehicles.
Pressing the brake pedal and maintaining a stationary position is billed at a rate of $0.003 per second of immobility.
Energy dissipation during the braking event costs an additional $0.00001 per Joule of heat generated.
Basic stay-in-line and start/stop following in traffic has become pretty standard for almost a decade at this point and paywalling it now would be outrageous. I have a 2017 car that does this.
How long do people keep their Tesla normally?
If you turn on TACC, it will constantly whine that you're hugging the side of 'your lane'. But it's one lane for both directions, you're supposed to hug your side!
In my SAAB I used cruise control anywhere I expected to maintain speed for any amount of time. In the Y I don't bother on this type of road because it bitches at me constantly and sometimes even jerks me to the middle of the lane. That's never happened with oncoming traffic but I'm not risking it.
[1]https://shorturl.at/jSQhP (shortened, Maps links are huge)
There's even Teslas operating as "auto taxis" now in some cities - they drive entirely without anyone even in the driver seat.
What you're describing sounds like the former system, while the latter one is what should be compared to Tesla's "autopilot" or "FSD" or whatever the fuck. It works very well on both my cars and is a game changer for longer drives.
I consider good implementations of this and adaptive cruise to be basic equipment now, and asking $99/month for them is absolutely wild, especially since what you're getting isn't the "full self driving" we were promised. You still have to be fully engaged with what the car is doing and ready to take over in a fraction of a second.
Seems like Subaru lane assist is considerably better than when it first came out in 2013 or so. I was able to experience it back then and it could have pinballed, certainly wasn't as steady and capable as it is more than ten years of development later.
The speed is what I like, and the simplicity when I bought it. I hate 10,000 trim options with random prices like BMW and having to argue with a sales guy - just gimme the price!
Of course, I don't trust it as much as I trust Waymo's system, and I'm very careful when using it in rain or fog...
Anecdotes like yours are often from the point of view of someone in California - sunny, clear weather most of the year. In monsoon rain, fog, snow, or unusual markings on the road, all these systems break down.
Well then, this isn't the car for you. For many other people the safety features are important. I wouldn't mind if every car had a camera that made sure the driver was paying attention and didn't fall asleep.
But some claims he makes seem like they’re plain factual. For example he’s claiming that Robotaxi rides in Austin don’t have human supervision now (https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/2014397578352226423). Is that true or is it that they’re just remotely monitoring them instead of sitting in the car?
Elon also retweeted Bloomberg’s fawning review of how perfect FSD is (https://xcancel.com/SawyerMerritt/status/2014721293950590985), but I also see lots of people saying FSD is far less reliable than something like Waymo, and that intervention is frequently needed. To me it seems like all of a sudden, when it became obvious that Waymo is far ahead and Tesla’s stock is overvalued and China’s FSD competitors have caught up, there has been a push to say FSD is ready to be on streets just like Waymo.
Is this just a dangerous experiment on the public? Or has it actually improved in some way? Have they said what specific software improvements they built to make it ready for the public?
Of course this is the same system that likes to ignore train crossing red warning lights [3] so it can run into crossing trains. Very advanced.
[1] https://xcancel.com/joetegtmeyer/status/2014410572226322794
[2] https://electrek.co/2026/01/22/tesla-didnt-remove-the-robota...
[3] https://xcancel.com/RealDanODowd/status/1968788791805583629
Who is to say anyway? I don't trust Chinese company claims any more than I do Tesla's. Probably less because in America so many folks dislike Elon that even sometimes the negatives are blown out of proportion and are much more widely reported on.
Waymo's claims I trust a little bit more because they're often operated in extremely limited circumstances (why not just take a bus or walk or something), with supervision, and because I've heard of a number of bizarre incidents.
All of these tools and technologies are of moderate utility - if you're going to drive it's probably eventually going to be safer for most people (most of whom are exceptionally poor drivers) to just let the car drive. But if you remove the need for hopping in a car to go to Costco to get a jug of milk and instead allow people to just walk down the street a little ways you realize that these are just additive technologies.
If we built cities properly we wouldn't need to spend $50,000 on a car, plus maintenance and insurance, and now a $99.99 starting subscription which, will probably become mandatory at some point for insurance purposes, just to participate in daily life. That's not to say there's anything wrong with cars, I have one, a Tesla in fact, but requiring a car for existence leaves us all poorer and worse off.
e.g. if it has a 99.9% chance of doing your daily commute without crashing and without you intervening, you can monitor it closely from the driver's seat for 6 months and there'll be ~90% chance that everything looks fine and you never need to intervene. But then if you start napping in the backseat on your commute, there's a 70% chance you'll crash within 5 years.
So instead of admitting they were wrong all along and doing what's necessary to catch up (add LiDAR to their sensor stack), they are going to quietly "pivot" Tesla to a "ai and robotics" company, with the monthly fee they'll continue to bilk anyone who is still enthralled enough to believe them on their FSD grift, but they will run the same scam as they did with FSD (Musk will say "humanoid robots for the home in in 3 years", yet we will still be waiting for them to be useful in the year 2035)
Waymo isn't just the Waymo Driver technology and sensor suite. It's charging and cleaning depots. It's product support both for the customer and the vehicle that scales. It's an insane amount of LiDAR acquired 3-D mapping data, plus real time data from Google maps and navigation.
Meanwhile Tesla has replaced some of the drivers sitting in the front seat with chase cars. Just to make the technically correct claim that the cars are no longer supervised by someone in the car.
Except they do.
Which is why there's FDA certification and regulation and the Lifepak 15s I used as a paramedic cost around $40,000.
Mercedes was also willing to put their money where their mouth was and accept liability for vehicle software issues. (Cue here the Tesla stans talking about "how limited" that was. Almost perhaps as if it was for a good reason and not "if it compiles, ship it").
I don't think that's actually your point, but it sort of sounds like it.
And "in the context of something that is designed to save lives"... well, absolutely, many manufacturers do and will and even "have to".
I'm not a Tesla fan, I will never own a fully self driving car, but I don't have a problem with a company charging money for features that consumers want. There are about a dozen other car manufacturers in the US alone that can sell self driving cars without a subscription if they want to.
Autopilot is not self-driving, it is lane-centering with traffic aware cruise control. It has not gotten any maintenance or updates in years, as far as we can tell.
Identical functionality is available from many competitors with no subscription. This is a noteworthy decision for Tesla because AP has long been one of their defining features, dropping it is a big step backward just as the market caught up.
Nobody is forced to buy a Tesla, correct, but that isn't a requirement for newsworthiness.
Progress, for sure.
Waymo expanded highway operations at the end of last year
https://apnews.com/article/waymo-autonomous-driverless-cars-...
Side A: Tesla can grow FSD subscription revenue by making FSD + Autopilot completely based on subscription. Lot more people use Autopilot than FSD. In the happy path such users will pay the subscription and that revenue will increase.
Side B: Autopilot (aka lane keeping) is fast becoming default option across manufacturers. Tesla will take a dip in sales if such 'basic' option is no longer available.
Whether side A > side B is to be seen.
Not paying $99/mo for it.
The issue is not that “FSD” is $99/mo. The issue is that a feature of $22k cars (lane keeping) is behind the $99/mo paywall.
Basically not enough people were buying the subscription for Elon to get his payout. But someone who just wants auto steering isn’t going to decide they’ll pay $99/mo for that. So this is just going to make people who like that feature not buy a new Tesla when the time comes.
