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Comment by slibhb | Hacker News Reader

From what I've heard, the autopilot is very good and getting better. It is hard to distinguish the haters from the hype.

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I rented one for a road trip. It was nothing short of magical. Scary to give it control. And I can believe there are edge cases … but it’s real.

I’d guess that it’s going to take a while to catch up because the real world data is the moat. Maybe if someone partners with Waymo but the price point will be higher.

The thing that gives me pause about buying one is: what happens if the company loses interest? Is it like “owning” a game after the company shuts down the servers?

I’ve heard the same but I think the question is “is autopilot worth basing your entire car purchase around it?” and “will competitors be able to replicate Tesla’s success?”.

If autopilot is basically the only thing Tesla has going for it then they’ve got a risky path ahead of them.

From personal experience: "yes, no question", and "maybe though it'll take a long time and a lot of compute and training data". The day level 3 automation (basically what Tesla's FSD is, even though it's classified as level 2) comes to some other car, I'll strongly consider switching.

Maybe a stock crash and total failure of Tesla will be the best thing that happens. The US government (assuming us citizens can somehow continue to claw it back) or some benevolent entity can buy the ML models for cheap and open source them. It's really their only truly valuable, resilient asset, IMO.

> “is autopilot worth basing your entire car purchase around it?”

Unsupervised FSD is, yes.

> and “will competitors be able to replicate Tesla’s success?”.

I wouldn't bet on a big auto-maker, personally. But maybe they can outsource it. And...well, AI. Things are moving fast. But I think the moat can hold for a while.

For me, even now it's worth basing the entire purchase around it. Competitor auto-makers, if they executed perfectly, would need 4-5 years to get to catch up to where Tesla is now in autonomous driving; so probably a lot longer in reality.

I loved how the Cybertruck looked but when I test-drove it, I realized it wasn't for me. Tesla can now do a Rivian R1 or Hyundai Palissade type design and do well. But they will prioritize the cab since they got it to the current scale pretty quickly and it will be a money printer for them.

> *”will competitors be able to replicate Tesla’s success?”

Tech first companies like Waymo: yes, clearly.

OEM US automakers? Not a chance, not ever. They can’t do a simple infotainment system to save themselves. If they want to “auto” driving, they’re going to license it from some other company.

It's actually easy. The media would love to print stories about robotaxis having chaotic accidents, so you can trust that you will hear about it if that starts happening.

You might be waiting a while, though... If it's not happening now, it's unlikely to ever happen.

I have it. It is shockingly good but not as good as a person. And anything below 100% is dangerous.

For instance, how it detects pedestrians. Ive had instances where someone is looking to cross, the FSD either ignores them completely or it slows down a little, baits them into going forward, then resumes running them over. It detects car to car problems very well but doesn’t try to interpret pedestrian’s intent outside of the actual road.

I, and many others, could never go back to a vehicle that doesn't have this level of self-driving. It really is such an improvement it's crazy how little people who haven't experienced it understand.

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