NHTSA complaint #11618812

Owner complaint summary

I have been an owner and fan of Tesla’s FSD for 5 and 1/2 years. Even though Tesla has repeatedly missed Elon’s promised delivery dates, I’ve remained an advocate. I am a Sr. Enterprise Architect and have a Masters in Software Engineering. I know how difficult a problem like an AI-based FSD is to solve, so I’ve been cutting Elon some slack on his constant over-promising and under-delivering. My daughter goes to school over 800 miles from home, and I’ve used FSD to do over 90% of the driving taking her to and from school, and it’s done pretty darn well, but the latest two versions I’ve received over the last few weeks have been so bad, they are dangerous in my opinion. Issues like panic braking for no visible reason, and today my car made an unexpected lane change across two lanes, cutting off a rapidly moving truck in the fast lane, all requiring me to take control. I now have interventions every few minutes, sometimes only a few minutes from engagement. With Tesla’s focus on “Robotaxi Day,” I am concerned that the demo may be more smoke and mirrors, because the latest version of FSD on my car is nowhere near ready for prime time. Can Tesla fix this? I’m sure they can, but this software version was definitely rushed out too soon, probably because Elon put heavy pressure prior to their big Robotaxi event. My wife has a Model Y with FSD behaving the same way, so it is not isolated to just my car. If Robotaxi Day is a smash success, they are either running a hardware or software version my 2 cars do not have, or they demoed in a very controlled environment. But here’s another issue. We’ve all been promised a working FSD. If Tesla found that level 3 hardware cannot deliver, and if Elon has to eat crow and embrace LIDAR, for example, there will be a class action against Tesla from owners stuck with an FSD technology that is not safe and doesn’t deliver on Elon’s promises. I doubt Tesla will upgrade all of us to hardware that works. Then what? My FSD is v12.5.4.1.