It's coming... And they are making headway at such a rapid pace that even as someone that reads about them every day I didn't have any idea how far along they were.
Quick catchup... Autopilot 2.0 came out in late 2016 and consists of 8 cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors and a long range forward facing radar setup. Tesla boasted that all cars shipping at that point had the hardware installed to drive themselves completely and all that needed to catch up was the software. At the time nobody believed this because the Autopilot 2.0 cars couldn't even stay in a single lane properly. It took them almost a year before they were just equal to Autopilot 1.0.
Over the past few years Tesla has pushed back the promised timeline for full self driving and most recently said they were close and would be feature complete (but with the driver still needing to pay attention) by the end of this year. I thought that was a load of shit. I just rented a Model 3 to make sure it will work in my day to day life... I'm happy to say I'm wrong.
Current Autopilot
Autopilot used to see just lanes. More specifically: just your lane. If your lane turned too much it would simply disengage. If you entered a turn too fast it would make no attempt to slow down because it was stupid. It just saw two lines and knew it's job was to keep the car between them. This made for interesting experiences if you dared to use autopilot on an offramp. It would simply maintain your set speed and try to follow the lane until physics deemed it couldn't and you'd need to take over for the car. And this was the way things were until very recently.
Fast forward to now and the car is 99% fully autonomous on the expressway. Set a destination, get on the onramp, engage autopilot and sit back. It will merge onto the expressway for you, it will overtake slower cars automatically (without driver intervention), it will move to the lane it needs to be in to stay on it's route and then automatically move you over to the next expressway and then it will exit where you need to get off, disengage and hand control back over to you. And it's fucking fantastic.
I was expecting a parlor trick. I was expecting it to get easily confused or to need my intervention often. Instead it needs my intervention maybe 2 - 3% of the time which when you consider it is still not being billed as fully autonomous that is uncanny. Where it impressed me most was anticipating things:
-HOV LANES - In LA we have HOV lanes and the lanes are separated from the rest of the expressway by double yellow lines and then in set areas that changes to standard lane markings where cars can enter or exit the lanes. So a couple times I thought the car was trying to push me into the HOV lanes in the double yellow line areas but it was actually just able to see the break in the lanes sooner than I was, put it's signal on and waited until the break to move over. Same with exiting the lanes.
-Slower Cars - When pushing me over from one expressway to another it had to move me over 5 lanes of traffic in the course of a mile. It did this but on the last lane it had maybe a quarter mile to get me over before I missed the interchange to the next expressway. The problem: there was a cluster of cars to my right blocking my way. I either needed to slow down or speed up and then get in that lane. Now this seems like an obvious thing to us but for autonomy this has been a struggle. The car handled it effortlessly. It sped up, put me ahead of those cars and then slowed back down. It was fucking unbelievable. The video I'll post doesn't look impressive and the reason it doesn't look impressive is because the car is driving like I'd be driving it. Here is a video I sent my brother of my wacky ass freaking out...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NBDG_1M3Kk
-Heavy Traffic - Another area I thought it would have problems. Today I was sitting in heavy traffic on the 101 and it needed to move over into the next lane. I thought it would wait for a break in traffic before signaling and moving itself over. Instead it proactively signaled and safely pushed it's way into the next lane, exactly how you'd do it yourself in that situation.
But where I'm seeing the most improvement, and I think this is what a lot of people are overlooking, is the car's ability to handle tight curves and to adjust it's speed to accommodate those curves. I live off of Mulholland in Los Angeles. It's a complex road that runs along the top of the Hollywood Hills and has very few straight areas. I distinctly recall engaging autopilot on my car (and on the last Model 3 I had) and the first curve the car would hit it would immediately disengage autopilot and hand control over to you or if it did manage to see the curve it would enter it without slowing at all. Last night I drove the entirety of this 8 - 9 mile road and the car did almost the entire thing itself. Again, the video doesn't look impressive and that's what's impressive about it. It just looks like I'm driving but in this video the car is doing all the work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naIHl9pj0tc
The takeaway? Nobody is even close to Tesla in autonomy on this level. They'd have to be hiding the tech because it would be impossible for them to be testing it on a fleet this size. We are close to your car being able to drive you in most situations.
Quick catchup... Autopilot 2.0 came out in late 2016 and consists of 8 cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors and a long range forward facing radar setup. Tesla boasted that all cars shipping at that point had the hardware installed to drive themselves completely and all that needed to catch up was the software. At the time nobody believed this because the Autopilot 2.0 cars couldn't even stay in a single lane properly. It took them almost a year before they were just equal to Autopilot 1.0.
Over the past few years Tesla has pushed back the promised timeline for full self driving and most recently said they were close and would be feature complete (but with the driver still needing to pay attention) by the end of this year. I thought that was a load of shit. I just rented a Model 3 to make sure it will work in my day to day life... I'm happy to say I'm wrong.
Current Autopilot
Autopilot used to see just lanes. More specifically: just your lane. If your lane turned too much it would simply disengage. If you entered a turn too fast it would make no attempt to slow down because it was stupid. It just saw two lines and knew it's job was to keep the car between them. This made for interesting experiences if you dared to use autopilot on an offramp. It would simply maintain your set speed and try to follow the lane until physics deemed it couldn't and you'd need to take over for the car. And this was the way things were until very recently.
Fast forward to now and the car is 99% fully autonomous on the expressway. Set a destination, get on the onramp, engage autopilot and sit back. It will merge onto the expressway for you, it will overtake slower cars automatically (without driver intervention), it will move to the lane it needs to be in to stay on it's route and then automatically move you over to the next expressway and then it will exit where you need to get off, disengage and hand control back over to you. And it's fucking fantastic.
I was expecting a parlor trick. I was expecting it to get easily confused or to need my intervention often. Instead it needs my intervention maybe 2 - 3% of the time which when you consider it is still not being billed as fully autonomous that is uncanny. Where it impressed me most was anticipating things:
-HOV LANES - In LA we have HOV lanes and the lanes are separated from the rest of the expressway by double yellow lines and then in set areas that changes to standard lane markings where cars can enter or exit the lanes. So a couple times I thought the car was trying to push me into the HOV lanes in the double yellow line areas but it was actually just able to see the break in the lanes sooner than I was, put it's signal on and waited until the break to move over. Same with exiting the lanes.
-Slower Cars - When pushing me over from one expressway to another it had to move me over 5 lanes of traffic in the course of a mile. It did this but on the last lane it had maybe a quarter mile to get me over before I missed the interchange to the next expressway. The problem: there was a cluster of cars to my right blocking my way. I either needed to slow down or speed up and then get in that lane. Now this seems like an obvious thing to us but for autonomy this has been a struggle. The car handled it effortlessly. It sped up, put me ahead of those cars and then slowed back down. It was fucking unbelievable. The video I'll post doesn't look impressive and the reason it doesn't look impressive is because the car is driving like I'd be driving it. Here is a video I sent my brother of my wacky ass freaking out...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NBDG_1M3Kk
-Heavy Traffic - Another area I thought it would have problems. Today I was sitting in heavy traffic on the 101 and it needed to move over into the next lane. I thought it would wait for a break in traffic before signaling and moving itself over. Instead it proactively signaled and safely pushed it's way into the next lane, exactly how you'd do it yourself in that situation.
But where I'm seeing the most improvement, and I think this is what a lot of people are overlooking, is the car's ability to handle tight curves and to adjust it's speed to accommodate those curves. I live off of Mulholland in Los Angeles. It's a complex road that runs along the top of the Hollywood Hills and has very few straight areas. I distinctly recall engaging autopilot on my car (and on the last Model 3 I had) and the first curve the car would hit it would immediately disengage autopilot and hand control over to you or if it did manage to see the curve it would enter it without slowing at all. Last night I drove the entirety of this 8 - 9 mile road and the car did almost the entire thing itself. Again, the video doesn't look impressive and that's what's impressive about it. It just looks like I'm driving but in this video the car is doing all the work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naIHl9pj0tc
The takeaway? Nobody is even close to Tesla in autonomy on this level. They'd have to be hiding the tech because it would be impossible for them to be testing it on a fleet this size. We are close to your car being able to drive you in most situations.