Tesla FSD 12.4.3 is Driving Like a Professional Chauffeur

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Various first impressions of Tesla FSD v12.4.3 are positive.

esla FSD 12.4.3 drives like a professional chauffeur. It executes many maneuvers more smoothly than a human could, and can often react to road hazards before the human driver even notices them

Dave Lee and Whole Mars are impressed and provide more details.

1. v12.4.3 felt overall like a better build compared to v12.3.6 (which most people have). It drove smooth, confidently, and performed maneuvers a bit more confident compared to v12.3.6.

2. For example, turning right into oncoming traffic just seemed better. I’m not going to say it is crazy better, but I’d say it’s better. There’s still a lot of room to go where I think FSD needs to match the level of an average human in terms of the confidence and time it takes to take a right turn onto oncoming traffic, and v12.4.3 isn’t there yet. But it’s much improved.

3. Some of the quirks of v12.3.6 have been fixed. One example, is v12.3.6 would do this head-fake maneuver if there was a median and I needed to turn left at a stop light. It would edge into the median a few times back and forth before going in, and it was cool at first but strange. v12.4.3 handles the median prior to getting into right turn lane much better, just like a human (at least in my initial experiences).

4. It seemed to be able to choose the right lane to be in a bit better than v12.3.6. There was one place I frequently test where v 12.3.6 would get confused between a lane going straight and a lane turning right, but v12.4.3 recognized the correct lane to get into immediately.

5. The nag system in v12.4.3 is a bit too aggressive for my likes as sometimes I’m looking straight ahead but it tells me to pay attention. But nevertheless, it’s better than the old v12.3.6 system where it would give steering wheel nags. In v12.4.3 you just need to keep your eyes looking forward to remove the nag.

6. v12.4.3 is not perfect and that’s not what I think we should expect from it. It still has its weaknesses. On a right turn with a red right arrow, it was a bit confused and went back and forth on whether to go or not.

In a parking lot I was trying to get out of, it went into a dead end.

But overall, there’s something about v12.4.3 that just made the 2 hours of driving much better than v12.3.6 for me. It felt like an upgraded driver – more confident, less hesitant. I didn’t need to press/tap the accelerator as often. I just let it do its thing.

7. FSD v12.4.1. and v12.4.2 had its quirks and it was understandable why those versions never went to wide release. Mainly there was a hesitancy/cautiousness that was excessive in certain situations, and some behavior that with sometimes odd. Not necessarily unsafe, just a big odd. But v12.4.3 (in my limited testing) was leaps and bounds better in this regard.

8. At the end of the ride, my reaction was “Wow! That was an amazing drive!” Probably the best FSD drive I’ve ever taken.

And it’s exciting because if my limited experience and takeaway is correct then I think this is a significant, and a very significant, improvement from v12.3.6.

It’s exciting to see Tesla continue to make improvements and deliver.

8 thoughts on “Tesla FSD 12.4.3 is Driving Like a Professional Chauffeur”

  1. Personal experience from fanboys is nowhere near rigorous testing from regulatory agencies.

    • Riiiiiight — like the rigorous testing performed on inexperienced drivers in order for those drivers to obtain their license for free and unfettered access to all highways and byways?
      That testing?

      • Yes, IT IS testing. And all drivers are “inexperienced” if they never drove a car before. Guess what Bubba, you have to learn, before you “know”.

  2. And still all of this improvement is pointless unless the metric miles until intervention increases. Remember that Elon claimed that 12.4 would have 5-10x more miles until intervention compared to 12.3. Well, I would be happy with a 2x…

  3. How is it when it comes to dealing with the old Coyote/roadrunner trick of painting a tunnel on the side of a wall? That’s the sort of thing that concerns me, spoofing of the sort that a human would likely just chuckle at.

    • True.

      I’d like to see evidence that they know when to seek help. Hallucinations may be a manageable problem with time but they demonstrate how poorly neural nets deal with “data holes” using common sense to deal with the unexpected is important for interacting with the real world. Driving is the perfect example of “the real world”. Things just happen.

    • ooh, I would love to see that. While unlikely to ever experience that irl, I would love to see a test.

    • Excellent point. The most effective spoof is one that is right in the middle of weird and silly. Something that we notice, but don’t want to draw attention to it, because the person who did worries about looking silly,(irrelevant) or weird (unhinged or just stupid). It’s very hard to “utterly cloak’ or make invisible actions, intentions, or hardware. To bury any of these things in an unbreachable ‘black hole” creates a paradox in physics and psychological/sociological perceptions.

      It’s just so much more energy efficient to embed “important, real stuff that affects other stuff” inside orchestrated noise. Not just static, but choreographed noise. To make whatever your trying to hide, seem silly or weird. We actually know how to penetrate random noise to see the information contained within, or behind. I can’t go into that, but when noise is crafted to “look possible, but also nonsense”, like painting a tunnel on a wall, real information could be embedded within that “cartoon”. But to acknowledge that would take people not afraid to look silly. That takes balls, and “out of the box” insight.

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