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Who here uses Tesla FSD? I finally got a Tesla after two of my friends nagged me to for years. And holy shit, the car drives itself. How does Tesla not have like 90% market share? Why are people still buying Fords and Volkswagens?
The government should be incentivizing the crap out of these. I asked Astra and it estimates the U.S. loses 0.9 QALY's per person due to vehicle accidents. We could probably reduce this by 50% at least just by rolling out FSD.
Speaking of Teslas: I've probably not going to buy a Tesla anytime soon, but I've been offered Teslas by rental shops several times and I've so far declined, because driving an unfamiliar car in unfamiliar environment is kinda risky. So I wonder what's the experience of people that did drive it - is there any adjustment from driving a regular car that is needed? Can I just start it up and freakin drive or do I need some adjustments? How easy/hard is to get a hang of it from 0 experience?
Also, if I try it as a rental, what about range anxiety? I sometimes need to drive up to ~100 miles or more in such situations, of course mostly through urban-suburban landscape so there's always a gas station within 5-10 mins drive, but I have no idea about changing a Tesla. I remember some years ago I was out on a trip with friends, and the guy responsible for transport picked an EV (not Tesla, don't remember which one) and it turned out a minor annoyance to change it because a lot of nearby chargers had some kinds of "guests only" or "clients only" policies. I wonder what's the score on that now.
If you just want to get a feel for driving one, pop into your nearest Tesla showroom and take a test drive. They're usually very accommodating, they don't handle sales directly, and they don't work on commission.
The controls are a bit different, though highly automatic and generally intuitive for someone who is familiar with screen UI. For example, changing driving modes is done with a selector on the screen or overhead buttons, but is usually not necessary because simply buckling in and stepping on the brake will select an appropriate gear for you. Same with Y-turns: turn the wheel hard and brake facing a road edge, and it will automatically select reverse; reverse, turn the wheel hard and brake, and it will automatically select drive. Most other functions are either automated, like headlights, wipers, and door locking, or have pretty obvious controls. If you are a control freak and don't like automatic functions, you will probably find the controls frustrating.
The accelerator operation is much different than in a standard automatic transmission and closed to driving a manual transmission with a high-compression engine. As soon as you lift the accelerator, the car will start to slow. Lift all the way and the car will slow as much as medium braking does in an automatic, so in most driving it is not necessary to use the brake at all. It takes a little getting used to, but not having to switch pedals constantly is a pleasure. The accelerator feels much more closely related to speed than power, as opposed to a gas automatic.
On longer trips, providing you input your destination, the navigation system is very good about getting you to charging locations, so that is rarely an issue. Even the standard rage is typically well over 200 miles, so you shouldn't have to stop more than once every couple of hours, and charging from a low state of charge to around 75% usually takes barely more time than to use the restroom, get a snack, and stretch your legs a bit. The one issue I've heard of with rentals is that they expected you to return them with the same state of charge as when you left, which can be inconvenient if it was very high, as it means you have to charge somewhere close to the rental location and charging to very high states of charge takes much longer than going from low to around 75%.
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