Tesla Autopilot vs Full Self Driving (FSD). There are currently a few differences between the two but it's expected the gap will widen by the end of this year or early next. Autopilot will steer your car in a lane and keep it at speeds you can set from your steering wheel controls. It will not react to red lights and stop signs. For that you need FSD. FSD will stop you, will change lanes for you, and will take exits on the highway for you. Autopilot will not change lanes, will not take exits and will not stop at red lights and stop signs. That's about it. Is that worth the extra money for FSD? Right now I figure no and didn't purchase it. Down the road you will be able to say, "Take me to work," and it will take all the turns and so on for you. Maybe then it will be worth it but Tesla says it will be more expensive. You can add FSD at any point in time, the hardware is already in the car.
I will say that autopilot is pretty cool. Many of my drives, at least 2/3 of it is on autopilot. It will keep you in your lane and will follow other cars. If they stop at a red light, my car stops. When they start going again, my car goes. The car will not turn left or right on its own. If you are in front or the only car, then you have to stop and start on your own and keep pressing the Autopilot start button.
One scary aspect is that autopilot, and I assume FSD, do not recognize Calgary school/playground zones. So the car will not slow down for them! This is one reason I do not use autopilot in residential areas. It does speed up and slow down in other areas where it recognizes the speed change.
Another reason for not using it in residential areas is a lack of lines. This causes Autopilot to assume it has 1 giant lane instead of 2 lanes (one parking + one driving). Then it attempts to drive right down the middle of them. Too nerve-wracking for me. It would be better if it used the yellow middle line and then some sort of offset algorithm. Amusingly, it recognizes our garbage/recycle bins and draws them on the display as garbage/recycle bins.
The car does seem to react to a possible accident. I was driving on Stoney. Someone drove into an exit and slowed down. Then they cut back across into my lane, still going slow. There was an alarm sound and I swear the car started braking a split second before I mashed the brakes. I'm not about to go and retry it but I definitely feel the car began stopping before I reacted.
ers
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