A Tesla was in its self-driving mode when it crashed into a parked patrol vehicle responding to a fatal crash in Orange County Thursday morning, police said.
The officer was on traffic control duty blocking Orangethorpe Avenue in Fullerton for an investigation into a suspected DUI crash that left a motorcyclist dead around 9 p.m. Wednesday when his vehicle was struck.
A Fullerton Police Department spokesperson said the officer was standing outside his vehicle around midnight when he saw a Tesla driving in his direction and not slowing down.
It depends on which system they actually had on the vehicle. It’s more complicated than random people seem to think. But even with the FSD beta, it specifically tells the driver every time they activate it that they need to pay attention and are still responsible for the vehicle.
Despite what the average internet user seems to think, not all Teslas even have the computer capable of Full Self Driving installed. I’d even say most don’t. Most people seem to think that Autopilot and FSD are the same, they’re not, and never have been.
There have been 4+ computer systems in use over the years as they’ve upgraded the hardware and added capabilities in newer software. Autopilot, Enhanced Autopilot, and Full Self Driving BETA are three different systems with different capabilities. Anything bought prior to the very first small public closed beta of FSD a couple years ago would need to be replaced with a new computer to use FSD. Installation cost is included if someone buys FSD outright, or they have to pay for the upgrade if they instead want the subscription. All older Teslas however would be limited to Autopilot and Enhanced Autopilot without that computer upgrade.
The AP and FSD systems are not at all the same, and they use different code. Autopilot is designed and intended for highways and doesn’t require the upgraded computer. Autopilot is and always has been effectively just Traffic Aware Cruise Control and Auto steer. Enhanced Autopilot added extra features like Summon, Auto lane change, Navigetc.ate on Autopilot (on-ramp to off-ramp navigation) but has never been intended for city streets. Autopilot itself hasn’t really been updated in years, almost all the updates have been to the FSD beta.
The FSD beta is what is being designed for city streets, intersections, etc. and needs that upgraded computer to process everything for that in real time. It uses a different codebase to process data.
All cars since mid 2019 have the computer required for FSD.
At this point that includes the majority of all Teslas ever sold. Somewhere between 750k and 800k of 6 million don’t have the hardware. And of those 100-200k are upgradeable, maybe more but the research time isn’t worth it.
That being said, it still could have been AP and not FSD as the media gets it confused all the time.
Is that the actual time cutoff? My 2018 model 3 that came with Enhanced Autopilot was originally said to have the hardware necessary for FSD (Computer 2.5 the car says), but there were updates before FSD became actually available.
I never considered buying it so I never paid more than cursory attention to all of the different hardware revisions, only major ones like Computer 3, removing radar during parts shortages around COVID, the Ultrasonic sensors, etc.
Also I hadn’t realized that it had actually been that long since I bought it, without most of the regular time-based car maintenance like oil changes time has flown by with it. Or that production had ramped up so significantly since I got my Model 3. I knew it had ramped obviously and that the Model Y launched, but I didn’t realize how significant all of that actually was when added together.
Ya, it’s been that long and they’ve made a lot of cars since heh.
I got mine in H1 2019 and it was HW 2.5, and sometime shortly after that HW3 came out. At the time I knew that was the situation but I wasn’t concerned since they said they’d upgrade it.
It took awhile after HW3 came out to be offered the upgrade though. By the time I was eligible, we were in the peak of early covid lockdowns and I wasn’t traveling to the not so close service center for the upgrade.
Eventually they did it via mobile service and I got it.