It would be more meaningful if we could see the data controlled for all the factors auto insurance is priced on (driver age, zip code, credit score, vehicle age, etc.)
Does Tesla offer massively lower insurance premiums for drivers that do the majority of their driving with FSD?
I use it every single day and it is amazing! I have had my car for 6+ years now and it has only gotten better. Starting with "Navigate on Autopilot" when I originally got the car in 2019 which was pretty janky, it has only gotten better and better (with the rare regression in some cases).
As of the last year or so, I don't even have to touch the steering wheel anymore!
Given how famously the tesla switches self driving off moments before an accident, these statistics are impossible to trust (but also because musk is famously a liar)
I have a 2018 Model 3 with basic autopilot. I have an FSD question. Does FSD have different driving behaviors from basic autopilot? I'm not saying "capabilities"; obviously it has more capabilities, but I mean the actual driving choices.
I get that FSD (maybe) has/requires better hardware than my car. But what I hate about autopilot is all around basic driving:
* Lane centering. It's extremely aggressive about lane centering, if you're in the right lane and an onramp joins from the right, the car aggressively drives to the right as soon as it perceives that the lane is wider.
* Throttle/brake behavior. It waits too long to brake (despite having radar in my car, which can supposedly "see" more than one car ahead), and when it does apply the brakes it doesn't do so smoothly. It tips in somewhat aggressively, and you can feel the discrete steps in brake force application change. Ditto for acceleration when the traffic in front of me moves.
There's no reason to think that any of this has anything to do with compute power, it all seems to be programming decisions that have been made for whatever reasons, so I can't see why FSD would be different.
And yet, if FSD drives like this, I don't get how anyone can think it's good? On the other hand, I've also heard people say they think autopilot is good, which it's clearly not, so it makes me judge their driving skill rather than the different models. But perhaps there's some matrix of hardware revisions and software/decision models out there that I'm unaware of, that explains differences in driving behavior, if they exist?
Tesla really trying to engineer good will, and unsurprisingly only using their own data, which paves over things like "driver intervention prevented FSD from crashing in this instance" or "FSD disengaged 2s before crash, therefore driver error".
Rather than play statistics games with self-reported dressed up supervised driving data to try and trick people into rolling the mortality dice with a robotaxi, just let the cars drive around empty. But he can't do that, because these cars are not FSD.
Even worse, the government could easily mandate LIDAR for autonomous cars, and that would basically kill Tesla overnight.
If we take this at face value then the only remaining explanation for why the insurance industry reports that Tesla drivers have more accidents than drivers of any other brand is that Tesla drivers are a self-selected group of extremely bad drivers, which is itself notable.
They have a huge store of data on accidents in teslas per mile driven. Why don't they compare their actual data on accidents? Well, they would, but it probably is worse with FSD.
But how many of those miles are spent hanging out in the left lane of a highway while other drivers, having to pass on the right, send death stares to the person in the passenger seat?
Marketing page with data from the brand. Conclusion: those numbers aren't worth anything, unless they come from independant organism they are just advertising and no more believable than old cigarettes ads.
Tesla Autopilot/FSD is by all accounts an impressive piece of tech, and the stats about accident prevention are pretty convincing. The problem IMO is that Tesla & Musk have muddled the conversation so much over the years and made so many promises that it is impossible for the average consumer to know what is or isn't real at this point.
Do I need to have my hands on the steering wheel or is the car actually self driving? Can my Tesla drop me off where I need to be and go park itself? And then can I summon it when I'm done? Can I turn my Tesla into a taxi that picks up other people and earns me money? Is it even possible for a Tesla to drive itself unsupervised?
All of these have been promised over and over again for the past decade, and at this point it is impossible for anyone to set the right expectations for themselves.
Doesn't matter I and almost everyone in my circle won't touch a Tesla.
The cybertruck was a huge boondoggle and only doctors and true beleivers bought them but over time I don't see them in the parking lot when I see the doctors in the building hmmm.
Also Elon "skipping around like a dipshit" (Tim Waltz) and now claiming he's worth a trillion dollars.
By his own admission his identity is entertwined with Tesla's.
That is old news. Today we learn that Optimus will be a world class surgeon and "democratize" medical care, that Grok 5 has a 10% chance of achieving AGI, that Grokipedia will be named Encyclopedia Galactica and that Elon will put 100GW of solar powered "AI" satellites into orbit.
“Next year for sure, we will have over a million robotaxis on the road,” said Musk on October 21, 2019. “The fleet wakes up with an over-the-air update. That’s all it takes.”
22 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 46.2 ms ] threadDoes Tesla offer massively lower insurance premiums for drivers that do the majority of their driving with FSD?
As of the last year or so, I don't even have to touch the steering wheel anymore!
How is this not way more controversial than having to pay extra to activate features like heated steering wheels in other brands?
I get that FSD (maybe) has/requires better hardware than my car. But what I hate about autopilot is all around basic driving:
* Lane centering. It's extremely aggressive about lane centering, if you're in the right lane and an onramp joins from the right, the car aggressively drives to the right as soon as it perceives that the lane is wider.
* Throttle/brake behavior. It waits too long to brake (despite having radar in my car, which can supposedly "see" more than one car ahead), and when it does apply the brakes it doesn't do so smoothly. It tips in somewhat aggressively, and you can feel the discrete steps in brake force application change. Ditto for acceleration when the traffic in front of me moves.
There's no reason to think that any of this has anything to do with compute power, it all seems to be programming decisions that have been made for whatever reasons, so I can't see why FSD would be different.
And yet, if FSD drives like this, I don't get how anyone can think it's good? On the other hand, I've also heard people say they think autopilot is good, which it's clearly not, so it makes me judge their driving skill rather than the different models. But perhaps there's some matrix of hardware revisions and software/decision models out there that I'm unaware of, that explains differences in driving behavior, if they exist?
Tesla really trying to engineer good will, and unsurprisingly only using their own data, which paves over things like "driver intervention prevented FSD from crashing in this instance" or "FSD disengaged 2s before crash, therefore driver error".
Rather than play statistics games with self-reported dressed up supervised driving data to try and trick people into rolling the mortality dice with a robotaxi, just let the cars drive around empty. But he can't do that, because these cars are not FSD.
Even worse, the government could easily mandate LIDAR for autonomous cars, and that would basically kill Tesla overnight.
* Compared to the estimated U.S. average.
They have a huge store of data on accidents in teslas per mile driven. Why don't they compare their actual data on accidents? Well, they would, but it probably is worse with FSD.
Do I need to have my hands on the steering wheel or is the car actually self driving? Can my Tesla drop me off where I need to be and go park itself? And then can I summon it when I'm done? Can I turn my Tesla into a taxi that picks up other people and earns me money? Is it even possible for a Tesla to drive itself unsupervised?
All of these have been promised over and over again for the past decade, and at this point it is impossible for anyone to set the right expectations for themselves.
The cybertruck was a huge boondoggle and only doctors and true beleivers bought them but over time I don't see them in the parking lot when I see the doctors in the building hmmm.
Also Elon "skipping around like a dipshit" (Tim Waltz) and now claiming he's worth a trillion dollars.
By his own admission his identity is entertwined with Tesla's.
He poisened the brand for me and many others.
https://xcancel.com/XFreeze/status/1989453462770237688#m
https://xcancel.com/XFreeze/status/1989453462770237688#m
1: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tesla-autopilot-staged-engineer...
2: https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/21/business/tesla-nhtsa-self-dri...
https://waymo.com/safety/impact/
“Next year for sure, we will have over a million robotaxis on the road,” said Musk on October 21, 2019. “The fleet wakes up with an over-the-air update. That’s all it takes.”
https://www.thedrive.com/news/38129/elon-musk-promised-1-mil...