Tesla’s FSD: taking the concept of beta to the max
By: Enrique Dans
Tags: Automotive, Autonomous Cars, Beta, Self Driving Cars, Tesla

IMAGE: Tesla

The carefully controlled release of a beta version of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (or FSD) feature for a small group of users has people sharing their experiences on the social networks and talking about how amazing, scary or insane it is to entrust driving to a vehicle even if the driver is ready at the wheel, and whether it makes sense to put the technology in the hands of users at an early stage of development.

The launch brings the company closer to fulfilling the words of its highly visible boss, Elon Musk, who promised that FSD would be ready before the end of the year, and makes clear the difficulties that its competitors, still light years away from such a feature, face.

This is not the first time Tesla has provided its users with services that are barely off the drawing board. We, the owners of its vehicles, are already perfectly accustomed to finding ourselves, during frequent software updates, with new beta features, and which we must first approve. These types of issues, when you are enjoying an extremely safe vehicle whose performance improves over time thanks to software updates, or participating in the testing of a functionality are things that customers of traditional car brands are simply unable to understand.

In practice, users are not only willing to try out these updates, but we take special care in doing so, primarily because it is our responsibility, but above all, ultimately, our vehicle and our lives if something goes wrong. I have little doubt that when drivers test a feature like this, they pay more attention and take more care than if the person testing it does not have to answer for a failure: in practice, any Tesla owner will drive much more competently than Rafaela Vasquez, the reckless Uber test driver in Arizona with no qualifications (or common sense), who was watching an episode of The Voice on her smartphone when her vehicle ran over a person.

In addition to this greater responsibility derived from what is at stake, it is worth noting that Tesla users, in addition to showing unwavering loyalty to the brand and an extremely high level of satisfaction with its products, are more attached to the company precisely because of what these frequent updates and the possibility of trying out new features mean, compared to the usual experience of acquiring a vehicle and having it never evolve again, or even talk to the person who sold it to you, and at most to the workshop that maintains or repairs it.

Obviously, Tesla’s inclination to allow its users to beta test a product has a lot to do with a software company mentality versus that of the automotive industry: no traditional car manufacturer would dare to do something like this, and if they did, they would be faced with hundreds of lawsuits from their users if something went wrong. In the case of Tesla, not only does this not happen, but those users are happy to share their experiences so as to improve the product.

Does it make sense for a company to leave a beta product such as FSD to its users, which could ultimately cause problems if it malfunctioned? Sure, this is a highly evolved beta, launched by a manufacturer with a lot of experience: I have been driving autonomously for a long time now and with users that have already gone through this phase before. The first time I trusted my Tesla to take a corner, brake, deal with a traffic jam or to stop at a traffic light, I was very attentive and prepared to take control immediately in case of malfunction, and that experience has not only been repeated several times with other features and functionality, but has always been completely satisfying. In addition, the company has launched the beta version by carefully choosing who to offer it to, considering that it knows perfectly well their driving habits and behavior at the wheel, because the vast majority of Tesla users share our driving data with the brand. And finally, it is clear that trusting users to test a beta version or, as we have already seen, to feed the driving algorithms, greatly accelerates the launch of these types of features.

In the end, the balance is clear: instead of simply being a company that launches a product, it is the company and the enormous laboratory consisting of its customers who incorporate millions of kilometers of driving into the algorithm: we test new features, we report problems. The result is an extremely competitive brand whose products improve much faster than those of its competitors, and above all, that enjoys a completely unassailable position because it can do things that no other traditional brand would even dare to consider. And that, as the evidence and the market show, is very valuable.