I lived through almost 7 years of numerous releases of Tesla’s Full Self Driving (FSD) as it progressed in my 2019 Model 3 using “Hardware 3” (HW3), finally reaching FSD V12. Elon Musk promised every year that all of us Tesla owners with HW3 would see Level 4 self-driving in the next 12 months. L4 means you can read a book or go to sleep while FSD safely drives your car. It never happened! In 2023, HW4 with a significantly improved computer and significantly improved cameras was released in all new Teslas. In 2025, significantly improved FSD V14 was released, but only for HW4 cars. In my 2019, I was stuck on FSD 12. We got occasional bug fix releases, but there were almost no prospects of further improvements in FSD. I was “stuck” in my 2019 Model 3 until it was totaled in an accident on May 9, 2026. I had overridden FSD 12, which would have prevented the accident. Now I’m driving a base level 2026 Tesla Model Y that has HW4, Tesla’s most advanced computer and cameras. Therefore, I now have FSD 14. By the way, FSD 14 keeps track of the percentage of driving time you are using it. My wife and I had always obsessively used FSD, but now I am no longer overriding it. I wait patiently when it makes a dead stop at a stop sign and I use the ~1.3 seconds it takes to start again to look left and right. It never misses cross traffic, but I am “supervising” anyway. New 2026 Tesla Model Y. Camp Hasler driveway, Three Lakes, Wisconsin. June 3, 2026. Photo by Fritz Hasler. What will my new car do for me that my old car wouldn’t? Verbally or by texting, you give the navigation your destination and FSD V14 will extremely accurately drive you there, often with no interventions. You choose between Sloth, Chill, Standard, Hurry, and Mad Max modes. Sloth keeps you right at the speed limit. Standard puts you 5 mph over (but no speeding tickets). Mad Max can reach up to 30 mph over the speed limit. Then, after choosing one of those, you sit there “supervising” while FSD V14 drives your car like an excellent chauffeur. FSD V14 rarely makes a mistake that you must correct. If you pick a mode consistent with your needs, FSD V14 rarely makes a decision that you want to change. FSD will now handle the beginning your trip. It will back you out of your garage and out of your driveway to the street or leave your parking spot in a parking lot and find its way out of the lot to the street. It has done this successfully for me many times now. FSD will handle the end of your trip. It will park on the street or find a place in a parking lot and park in it or pull into your driveway and park in a reasonable spot. Parking in a public parking lot is a much iffier process. You can’t specify a handicapped spot and it won’t search for the best spot closest to the store/office, etc. I will describe some of its other failures later. FSD V14 still works even with bikes on a rack in back. FSD V12 reported that the rear camera was obscured and refused to function when bikes were on a rack on the back. Strangely, with FSD V12, it was necessary to cover the rear camera to get it to work with bikes on the back. The two photos below illustrate how far we have come in 74 years. On styling, maybe not so far. 1952 Studebaker & 2026 Tesla Model Y. Bayfield, Wisconsin. May 28, 2026. Photo by Fritz Hasler. How far have we come? 1952 Studebaker. Bayfield, Wisconsin. May 28, 2026. Photo by Fritz Hasler. What are some of the mistakes FSD 14 still makes? The GPS that the Tesla navigation uses to locate your vehicle is only accurate to about 15 feet. Tesla’s navigation also depends on Google Maps, which are not always accurate or up to date. Without the precise location of your vehicle and precise maps, you can’t expect FSD 14 to park accurately. Here are some of the mistakes I have seen: Entering the correct address of our home in St. George, Utah, FSD V12 took us to a trailer park one street away. It was necessary to use the address across the street to get us to the front of our house. I think FSD 14 would make the same mistake, but I haven’t tried it yet. Entering the correct address of our house in Three Lakes, Wisconsin, FSD 14 takes us to a house the next street over. Only when we dropped a pin in the middle of our driveway would it take us to the correct address. We asked FSD 14 to take us to COSTCO Wholesale in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. FSD failed to find a parking place because the Google map Tesla is using shows only a green field at that location in spite of the fact that the COSTCO has been there for 3 years. We asked FSD 14 to leave the Rhinelander Airport and it proceeded to take us the wrong way on a one-way loop around the airport! Leaving the Bikes and Boards parking lot in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, the navigation (following the blue line) said to go left, but FSD 14 made us turn right. I assume it would have eventually found the Culver’s restaurant we specified, but only on a roundabout route. FSD V12 would occasionally pick a lane inconsistent with the navigation at a stop light. (For example, the navigation would specify straight and FSD would pick the turn lane.) I have heard reports that FSD V14 still has this problem. Navigation wouldn’t work without having the location of every road and street in the country in the data base. I don’t think this will be solved until the database has the lanes properly marked for every intersection in the country. What’s the hooker on Tesla’s new cars? If you don’t pay the $99/month, you don’t get steering assist for the first time with Tesla cars! This means steering yourself even on long trips on Interstate highways. You only get traffic-aware speed (cruise) control. Note: Even the low-ball Toyota Corolla rental car that I had after I had my accident had steering assist. Tesla is trying to “blackmail” you into paying an extra $99/month. This doesn’t affect me because I am addicted to FSD. However, I know people with Teslas who have never used the FSD they paid for and only use steering assist on the open road. For those who can’t afford FSD, you will be missing a very important feature. What’s still on the list of functions to be added to FSD 14? (If some have already been added, please let me know in the comments.) Slowing to 20 mph for flashing lights (when active) in school zones. Parking in your garage. Parking in a specific parking space in a parking lot or garage. Parking in handicapped parking places when legal and available. Picking the drive-through lane for fast food, ATM, or at other business locations. Slowing at all speed bumps. Slowing for the extreme storm sewer dips that we have in Utah. What will Tesla FSD never do? Tesla’s FSD will never drive you in really bad weather or really low visibility. Unlike Waymo and some other self-driving systems that have radar, Tesla eliminated its original radar that could see through fog and now relies entirely on visible-light cameras. Elon’s premise: if humans can drive with eyes that only work with visible light, then his system would be successful with only visible-light cameras. However, this means cars driving with Tesla’s FSD will be parked on the side of the road with human passengers in them when visibility is really bad. What’s the holy grail for Tesla Full Self Driving? That would be improving FSD to a point that it is making fewer mistakes and having fewer accidents than human drivers. Then FSD would no longer need to be “Supervised” and would be rated as L4. At this point, it would be morally imperative to make it legal to drive without supervision, maybe even required. Or … maybe it would still be even safer with a human watching over it. If you find any of my articles helpful to you, please use my referral link when buying a new Tesla: https://ts.la/arthur73734 (be sure to use it when you make your order). Tesla keeps changing the program but here’s the latest: If you are buying a new Tesla Model 3 or Y and use my link, you will get 2 months of free Full Self Driving (a ~$200 value) on top of the one month that comes free with every new Tesla. For a Cybertruck, you will get $1,000 off your purchase price.
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