Full Self Driving on Teslas is so good now that it has fundamentally changed how I think about cars. Before FSD was good I considered Teslas to be perhaps the worst option. The fit and finish isn’t that great compared to other similarly priced cars, some of the features felt like gimmicks (though I’ve come around to many of them), and FSD was downright scary.
Nine months ago, with the release of FSD 14, I bought a Model S and I absolutely love it. Of the roughly 2000 miles driven, 98% of them were driven autonomously, and the only reason the other 2% were driven manually is because FSD still isn’t great at parking garages or big parking lots, so I take over then. I also don’t bother if I’m just driving down the street in my neighborhood.
FSD makes your car feel like something different than a car. You sit down, tell it where you want to go, and then you relax until you get there.
A few weeks ago a friend and I went on a quest in Chicago to try the “best hot dog in the world”, which required either a $50 uber ride, or a long train and then a $15 uber ride. I don’t know if it was just the disappointing hot dog or the amount of time we spent in transit, but I thought, “This is ridiculous. I need a Tesla here”.
We live downtown and walk to most things, but Chicago has 240 neighborhoods, many of which are worth visiting. The train system is great in theory, but people smoke on it and play loud music on speakers, and there’s zero enforcement. We still take it sometimes, but I find myself avoiding it.
A lot of restaurants are an easy 15 minute drive away, but 30 minutes by train. Some can’t reasonably be reached without a car. Zipcar is great, but the one near our apartment isn’t always available, and it’s stressful trying to estimate traffic and your return time.
Anyway, a car makes sense.
The biggest thing to know is that there are two relevant versions of hardware in the cars: Hardware 3 and Hardware 4 (HW3/HW4). HW4 is roughly eight times as capable as HW3, and all cars 2024 or newer have it, along with some from 2023.
HW4 can run FSD 14, the latest version, and it is more or less flawless at this point. This is what I have in Vegas. It might take a slightly weird route or drive a bit more conservatively than I would, but generally speaking it will take you from any one point to any other point and do nothing scary. You don’t have to have your hands on the wheel, you just have to mostly be looking out the windows.
When I fly from Vegas to somewhere else and take ubers, I instinctively wish I was back in my own car because it’s a better driver.
I spend a lot less time in Chicago than I do in Vegas, and I walk a lot more here, so it felt wasteful to buy another HW4 car. They’re much more expensive, as you’d imagine.
What’s interesting about HW3 is that it will almost certainly be upgraded to HW4 or HW5 eventually. Elon has promised many times that they will do this, and a guy just did it himself and it actually worked. Without getting too much into the weeds, I think it’s inevitable that a HW3 will be able to be upgraded, possibly for free.
So I set my sights on a HW3 vehicle, figuring I can deal with worse FSD for a while (or even drive myself if necessary).
The first thing I found was an app called FSD Hunter. FSD costs $99/month, and is a bargain at that rate. You used to be able to pay $8000 once to have it for life, but that option is gone now. However, any car which was paid for retains FSD even when transferred.
The thing is, not every listing advertises this, and some don’t even realize it. If a dealership unfamiliar with Teslas takes one as a trade-in and resells it, they may not even know FSD exists. FSD Hunter searches the pictures and VINs and finds classified listings for Teslas that have FSD. It is very common for these cars to be priced in line with every other Tesla without FSD.
Right now there are older Model 3s with FSD for sale for $15k with under 100k miles. That’s a pretty crazy price for a car that can drive itself forever for free.
I ended up getting a 2020 Model Y in Chicago with 58k miles for $28k. I bought it from CarMax and when I turned on FSD in the test drive the salesman was astonished. He had never been in a self driving car and had no idea the car had it.
The car had an older version of FSD, version 12, and it was just okay. Driving in Chicago is a challenge, and it wasn’t doing great with complex situations. I considered taking advantage of the return window and spending $12k more to buy a HW4 car.
But after a couple hours in the parking garage hotspotting through my phone, I was able to download FSD 14 lite. I’d say that 14 lite is about 60-70% of the way from FSD 12 and real FSD 14. On highways it’s more or less the same and perfect, but Chicago streets are chaos and it can be a bit hesitant and jittery. For example, last night it approached a yellow light and alternated accelerating and braking before it finally decided to just go through. Either one would have been fine, as it was right on the edge, but the jitters are annoying.
Where it struggled most was trying to cross a street with constant left-right traffic and pedestrians on four crosswalks at the intersection. Actual Chicago drivers will sort of nose in and force the crossing traffic to make a gap for them, but FSD 14 lite jitters and edges out while the cars behind you honk. The navigation is also not able to handle the 2-3 levels of streets in Chicago. My parking spot is on a raised street that has a cross street that goes under it, and FSD is completely convinced it can turn from the lower street onto the higher street.
Now I just set the destination for an address two blocks away and drive the last two blocks myself.
I focus on the limitations only because most FSD/Tesla fanatics skip over them and talk about how perfect it is. It has issues, but they are rapidly being fixed, and it’s definitely well above the bar of being usable. My wife and I did a 3 hour road trip and it drove the entire way with no interventions at all. On the highway it was particularly smooth, navigating traffic and lanes well. Last night I drove downtown and I was impressed with how smoothly it would cross into the empty oncoming lane to pass an unloading uber.
It’s also important to remember that when this car was released 6 years ago, it couldn’t do any of this. It could basically go from exit to exit on the highway, but couldn’t even turn on city streets until years later. Even without new hardware, the pace of improvement is extremely fast.
All this is to say that I think there’s an opportunity here. The average new car transaction in the US right now is $50k and the average used car is $27k. For $27k you can buy a car that can drive itself anywhere in the country and will most likely be upgraded to be state of the art in the next couple years. If you live in an easy city to drive in, you may not even notice the difference between FSD 14 and FSD 14 lite.
I’m amazed at how few people know that FSD exists and that it’s actually good. FSD 14 is good enough that I would feel safe falling asleep in the car if it would permit me to. FSD 14 Lite is good enough that I’d feel safe being on my phone the whole drive if it would permit me to. It feels very much like being in the future and is almost certainly better than you think it is, if you haven’t experienced it yet.
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Photo is my Model S in Vegas. No glory shots of the new one yet, and it’s not that glorious anyway.
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