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according to a report by bianniu.com on september 25, foreign automotive media electrek recently experienced tesla's fully autonomous driving v12.5. the first impression was that the system drove more naturally, but it was still dangerous. the following is the experience.

i finally had a chance to test tesla full self-driving (supervised) v12.5 myself, and my first impression is that the system drives more naturally, but is still dangerous.

vigilance is crucial.

yesterday, i finally received the software update for my tesla model 3, titled “v12.5” (12.5.2.1, to be exact).

i’ve been waiting for this for a while. look, call me naive, but when tesla ceo elon musk said last year that fsd updates on hw4 (newer tesla cars) would lag behind hw3 (older tesla cars) by about 6 months, i believed him:

this makes sense. he has been promising autonomous driving on millions of hw3 cars for years. it makes sense for tesla to focus on delivering on that promise on older cars with less computing power before starting to use the higher computing power on newer hw4 cars.

however, this did not happen.

earlier this year, musk promised major improvements to the biweekly fsd inspections:

but i was on fsd v12.3.6 on a hw3 tesla model 3 and have not received any fsd updates in 6 months.

instead, musk acknowledged that tesla now needs to optimize its fsd code for older hw3 vehicles, while hw4 vehicles are getting more updates faster — suggesting that, despite its promises, tesla’s hardware on older vehicles has reached its limits.

while this situation has significantly dampened my hopes that tesla will deliver on its promise of autonomous driving in the millions of cars it has sold since 2016, i was still happy to see this in the release notes for my car after it was updated this week:

yesterday i had to drive from shawinigan to trois-rivieres (25 miles) and back. it was a good opportunity to test the system on the road and on the highway.

my first impression was that the ride comfort has been significantly improved. it feels much more natural to drive; the automatic speed mode feature helps a lot. it drives at a speed appropriate to the road rather than strictly adhering to the speed limit plus or minus your specified speed.

the new driver monitoring system is vision-based, rather than sending an alert asking you to pull the steering wheel while you're holding it, which also helps make the system feel more natural.

now, if you don’t look ahead at the road for a few seconds, an alert will appear on the screen to remind you to pay attention to the road, and the alert will go away if you return your attention to the road or make input to the steering wheel.

those are the main changes. i didn’t see a dramatic performance boost, but at least the system is more pleasant to use now. it makes using tesla fsd feel less like a job and more like a function, a welcome change after more than two years of “fsd beta” and now “supervised fsd.”

i had to turn the system off when i was almost at my destination because the car insisted on pulling into the right lane when i needed to park on the left. it was a little annoying, but a turn-off nonetheless.

on the way back, the car slowed down from my set speed on the highway for seemingly no reason. this is a common issue with tesla fsd that i've experienced with nearly every iteration of the system. it can be dangerous on the highway, but this time, it only slowed down by about 5-8 km/h and returned to the set speed within a few seconds without having to disengage.

however, not long after, i encountered a more serious problem that resulted in a key disengagement.

i have to turn left here:

there was a car approaching on the left, but it was far away and not going very fast. i would have turned without hesitation, but i wasn't sure if fsd would do that, or if it would wait for the car to pass, as fsd is usually more cautious when turning.

it decided to go forward but stopped a third of the way through the turn, as if it had changed its mind, or at least slowed down significantly while turning; it was hard to tell because i had to react quickly.

the front of the car was already in the way, so i had to take over and complete the turn faster to make sure the car behind me didn't hit me.

until then, i was very impressed with fsd v12.5. it's a reminder that as technology advances and feels better, especially as natural as this update, it's important to remain vigilant. the smoothness of this update can lead to overconfidence, but it's still prone to error, and i quickly learned that.

while i’m impressed, and i think this is an important step in that fsd now starts to feel like a real feature and not just homework for tesla customers to use to train the system tesla sold us years ago, i still find it hard to see the path from this point to unsupervised autonomous driving, especially on an hw3 car.

obviously, this was only my first drive and i need to spend more time to fully evaluate the system, but in about 50 miles i experienced two disengagements, one of which was pretty severe. we are still far from unsupervised.

my main concern is that as the system feels better and better, such as with this update, more people will start to become complacent with it, which could lead to more accidents.

i hope tesla’s new driver monitoring system can counteract this potential complacency.