I recently tested Tesla’s FSD (Supervised) software in Melbourne, one of the first in Australia to do so. During my time with it, I came up with a series of tests that would help me (and you), understand the current capabilities of the system as it stands, for the first release in Australia.
One that I didn’t have on my list happened organically – a fairly common scenario when driving city streets is to encounter a double-parked car. This can occur when someone is parking, last-mile deliveries, breakdowns and more.
Regardless of the reason why they occur, you need to respond to them as a driver, as does the digital driver – Tesla’s FSD (Supervised).
When the opportunity presented itself, I was excited to test if the software would overtake the parked car, venturing across the solid line, something Autopilot would never do.
The van was double parked as I approached. The reverse lights come on and actually moved backwards, before again stopping in our path. For a moment I was worried he didn’t see me, and I would need to intervene, but they it stopped.
FSD paused and waited for just a second, then seen a chance to overtake the stationary car and went for it, turning on to the opposite side of the road to achieve the maneuver.
As I passed the parked car, I glanced to me right to see the reason the van was stopped, another car was reversing from its parking bay and the van was angling for its spot.
FSD handled this brilliantly, taking the course of action, many humans would, continuing around the double-parked vehicle along its route.
It is situations like this that graphically demonstrate how much more human-like and how much more capable FSDs really is, built to handle advanced city driving scenarios.
Perhaps the most impressive part is that the decisions FSD makes is situation dependent. Shortly after clearing the van, I came across a second car stopped in my path. This SUV was waiting to turn across traffic and had FSD tried the same move, it would have ended in disaster. The car waited longer than before and didn’t attempt the move, indicating it understood the situation enough to know waiting in lane was the right move.
Now watch the video.
The importance of driver supervision
It’s vital to remember that this is a supervised system. This means you, the driver, are still responsible for the vehicle. FSD (Supervised) is not fully autonomous.
You need to be attentive and ready to take over at any moment. While the system is highly capable, it is still in development and will have moments where it needs a human to intervene. Think of it as having a highly skilled co-pilot, not a fully autonomous driver.
Pricing and availability in Australia
FSD is available as a one-time purchase price of A$10,100. It’s important to remember that FSD (Supervised) as seen demonstrated in this video, is not publicly available, and has only been available for Early Access users. At the time of writing, that’s less than 10 people in Australia, outside employees.
Tesla says FSD (Supervised) is ‘coming soon)’ and will initially roll out the software to vehicles with Hardware 4 (HW4), with a promise to support older HW3 vehicles at a later date, and even a free hardware upgrade for those who have already purchased FSD outright.