Jim Farley says Level 3 Autonomous Driving in 2026

I’m surprised nobody else has posted this yet?
Jim Farley Autonomous Driving by 2026

....soon

I saw it. I think most car makers will get to this in the next 3 years or so within a a narrow definition. User expectations need to be adjusted a bit... I think these things are only going to work:

• on sunny days (not at night)
• on highways only
• with fresh marking
• at speeds less than 80

The current hardware in our cars will not do all of this, but there remains room for SW improvement with the hardware we have.

for perspective, my other car is a Y with the FSD trial. As a result of using this on and off for ~6 months I have zero interest in my car driving on surface streets... it makes colossal mistakes on every trip.

On the other hand, I really like auto steering ADAS systems on divided interstates. I think it will be table stakes similar to air conditioning in a few years.

AngryMan said:

....soon

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Love it, first response to the OP ?

Blue highway said:

I saw it. I think most car makers will get to this in the next 3 years or so within a a narrow definition. User expectations need to be adjusted a bit... I think these things are only going to work:

• on sunny days (not at night)
• on highways only
• with fresh marking
• at speeds less than 80

The current hardware in our cars will not do all of this, but there remains room for SW improvement with the hardware we have.

for perspective, my other car is a Y with the FSD trial. As a result of using this on and off for ~6 months I have zero interest in my car driving on surface streets... it makes colossal mistakes on every trip.

On the other hand, I really like auto steering ADAS systems on divided interstates. I think it will be table stakes similar to air conditioning in a few years.

Click to expand...

So maybe you can answer a question for me: all my Tesla buddies are always sending me these videos of people with Teslas driving on surface streets, sometimes in fairly complex situations, with no driver interaction at all. There’s one thing every one of these videos has in common: it’s a clear sunny day, and the road pavement is clear (perhaps faded/missing striping, but no snow or anything). How does the system do in “real” driving conditions - say for example, at night, or in rain, or in snow, or on slippery surfaces (think icy patches or “back ice”)?

I will never let the car totally take over without me watching - I'm to chicken shit.

Jimrpa said:

So maybe you can answer a question for me: all my Tesla buddies are always sending me these videos of people with Teslas driving on surface streets, sometimes in fairly complex situations, with no driver interaction at all. There’s one thing every one of these videos has in common: it’s a clear sunny day, and the road pavement is clear (perhaps faded/missing striping, but no snow or anything). How does the system do in “real” driving conditions - say for example, at night, or in rain, or in snow, or on slippery surfaces (think icy patches or “back ice”)?

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The tesla system is a camera only system. Worse yet it does not have stereo vision for close in range measurement (like Subaru does)... with that...

On a clear sunny day it can drive from my driveway to somewhere else on surface streets
most of the time including dealing with bicycles and pedestrians... But as I posted above it will do things like go straight in left turn only lane... arghh!! It doesn't have to make very many mistakes like that to scare you.

When using "FSD" on the interstate in the rain it can do reasonably well in light traffic but in heavy rain and or heavy spray from traffic I don't trust it... it can and does make mistakes. (about as good as a 16 year old new driver) It will pop up a message saying that FSD is degraded based on weather and will limit the speed at which it will work.

It will work at night, but I have not tried it at night in the rain... sorry it is not ready for that.

The other thing it does regularly is that if a car is overtaking at a very high rate of speed (I'm going 70 and someone is coming up behind doing 90) it will not take this into account and change lanes in front of them when they are very close. I mentioned that it does not have radar or stereo vision so distances are poorly gauged.

I have not had the courage to try it on snowy roads...

Bluecruise kicked in yesterday on one of the small patches its available here. Shortly after it nagged me to keep my hand on the wheel. Thought it dropped out to standard cruise. Put my hand on and verified it was indeed hands free mode, took it off, and a few sec later nagged me again.

And they're talking about autonomous?

Then again when one mentions a month somethings ready, its always the last day. So end of 2026.

At the rate of promises to 1.3 Bc, or NACS adapter availability, not sure I'll see it in my day, and not on this car.

Jimrpa said:

So maybe you can answer a question for me: all my Tesla buddies are always sending me these videos of people with Teslas driving on surface streets, sometimes in fairly complex situations, with no driver interaction at all. There’s one thing every one of these videos has in common: it’s a clear sunny day, and the road pavement is clear (perhaps faded/missing striping, but no snow or anything). How does the system do in “real” driving conditions - say for example, at night, or in rain, or in snow, or on slippery surfaces (think icy patches or “back ice”)?

Click to expand...

I had a Tesla and I can answer for you. The FSD v12 is really good in “most” normal situations, that are good lanes, nice vision, good weather. But it fell apart if the roads were imperfect. One example: I drove it on a relatively foggy day on highway and the car will slow down from 110km/h to 70km/h because of poor vision (basic autopilot can go 90km/h fine) and constantly disengage, personally I would feel comfortable driving myself to 90-100km/h on that route.
Another example, I was trying to drive from a Popeyes parking lot to Costco, and just for the sake of science, I turned on FSD, the car immediately went to the drive thru lanes in the opposite direction and I had to takeover ?.

So to sum up, FSD does well on “boring road” and it’s good in a lot of situations which is still an amazing feast of engineering. But I will have to monitor it closely on less ideal conditions.

Jimrpa said:

I’m surprised nobody else has posted this yet?
Jim Farley Autonomous Driving by 2026

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scares the crap out of me knowing there will be MORE drivers on the road paying less attention. I would rather see less tech and lower cost vehicles for urban/suburban use.... leave the self-drive for the highway trucks to use between exits where striping is good, no intersections, and few surprises of than the random animals that can't sue you when you hit them.

One thing the article missed is Latitude AI. The article mentions that Ford shut down Argo AI which was actually a joint venture with VW. Ford then created Latitude AI and hired many of the engineers from Argo AI.

https://lat.ai/

Blue highway said:

I saw it. I think most car makers will get to this in the next 3 years or so within a a narrow definition. User expectations need to be adjusted a bit... I think these things are only going to work:

• on sunny days (not at night)
• on highways only
• with fresh marking
• at speeds less than 80

The current hardware in our cars will not do all of this, but there remains room for SW improvement with the hardware we have.

for perspective, my other car is a Y with the FSD trial. As a result of using this on and off for ~6 months I have zero interest in my car driving on surface streets... it makes colossal mistakes on every trip.

On the other hand, I really like auto steering ADAS systems on divided interstates. I think it will be table stakes similar to air conditioning in a few years.

Click to expand...

The challenge is the other drivers going insane, driving way too fast, too close, ect. If everyone had FSD it would work much better. Drove a 3, Y and X many times with FSD. I like it but way too nervous on non highways. Even on highways it’s still a bit wild with the horrible other drivers.

dtbaker61 said:

scares the crap out of me knowing there will be MORE drivers on the road paying less attention. I would rather see less tech and lower cost vehicles for urban/suburban use.... leave the self-drive for the highway trucks to use between exits where striping is good, no intersections, and few surprises of than the random animals that can't sue you when you hit them.

Click to expand...

Driverless SEMIs is/are like something outta my worst nightmares

Bruboy said:

I will never let the car totally take over without me watching - I'm to chicken shit.

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Not chicken shit your totally smart and sensible. It's too dangerous to do it yet likely years away. I don't know many of the generations that grew up driving and controlling a car their whole lives will adapt to this and giving up control to a car. Might take newer generations or newer drivers to adapt to this for it to take off.

Maybe my blue cruise will be updated by then. Or we will be notified that we will jump to the autonomous driving when it never comes out for the current MME owners.