The EV Boomer

🚨 TESLA FULL SELF-DRIVING V14.3.4 - HOW IT MADE MY VACATION COMMUTE A BREEZE Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3.4 drove my Fianceè and me over 360 miles this week, from our house in PA to West Ocean City, MD for a little vacation. Overall, it was great. It was another testament to why I believe Full Self-Driving is worth the $104 after tax I pay each month to have access to it. I wanted to talk about all the things it did, good and bad. The Good In general, there is literally no thing better on the market than Full Self-Driving. The fact that I can simply type in the address of the beach house and press a button and be on the way is incredible. I admit I usually expect FSD to do at least one thing wrong on a drive of this length. These things are more than usually just preferences of mine: speed, lane, and passing are the most common. My route to the beach requires I-95N from Maryland to Delaware, which is easily the most stressful part of the drive just due to the multiple lanes of traffic, the speed, and the congestion. FSD handles it great. I tend to adjust Speed Profiles throughout the drive. I entered I-95 on 'Standard' to gauge how FSD would react to the speed of the traffic. Once I recognized that I needed to be more aggressive, I let 'Hurry' do some work, which is where the performance truly shined. My Model Y passed slower cars on the left (at least for the most part), it was never traveling at a speed that would set itself apart from other traffic, and it was cautiously aggressive; it never bothered me with the speed it traveled, the decisions it made, or the passes it completed. It even drove through some serious rain, but I never felt unsafe. I preferred it to navigate through the storm. Driving to and from the beach has been something I've done my whole life; the drive has always been about 3 hours. It's not always a fun drive, and more often than not, after making it, I was always exhausted. Having FSD just truly changes how you feel. I didn't feel like I had just been in a car for three hours; I felt fresh and ready to start my vacation Sunday evening. It was a long day, too: I helped a buddy of mine move, my pup pooped in the car driving him to his sitter's house, and I had to pack for the trip. Usually, the last thing I would want to do is drive to the beach. It just does not feel that way with FSD because I know the car is going to do the vast majority, if not all, of the work. All I have to do is sit there. During the trip, I used FSD to get to and from the restaurants for dinner and handle congested lights and traffic patterns. It's Ocean City, Maryland; there are plenty of cars and tourists and traffic and pedestrians. It's stressful, and FSD just handles it all so well. The Not So Good I really don't have many complaints, but I noticed quite a few times that speed was really a problem. I was traveling 17 over the speed limit on the way down in Standard, so I clicked down into Chill quite a few times during the drive down. This was after I-95 and instead on Route 1 in Delaware. I chose to manually drive through Assateague Island National Seashore a lot of the time because there are a lot of horses and other wildlife, and I actually tend to travel below the speed limit in a lot of the federal side to anticipate animals. This really isn't a complaint, but Sloth wasn't even slow enough for this. I think this is one of the rare instances where I prefer to drive manually, plus I like to stop when the horses are hanging out close by. I had only a single disengagement that was truly a necessary takeover during the nearly 400 miles I used FSD over the weekend, and it happened on the way home. Traveling on Route 41 heading to pick up our dog on the way home, there was a short period of roadway where a second lane to our left was available. It is used by vehicles that are pulling into the numerous neighborhoods or businesses on the right side of the road, and it ends about 1/8th of a mile after the final neighborhood entrance. On Hurry, FSD signaled to go into this right lane and pass a line of cars as the lane was coming to a close. I took over after canceling the signal because the car still tried to move over. I disengaged FSD, drove for about 5 seconds, and turned it back on. I just put it into Standard and had no more issues with it. It was a great trip, and FSD really made it so simple from start to finish. I am very familiar with the area, but I still preferred using FSD to get to and from the store, dinner, or wherever we went. At this point, driving just does not feel like a chore any longer.

Now this is overnight hotel charging. 🤣😂 Got to love when your stop for night has a row of Superchargers in the hotel parking lot. 🙌