Jim Farley says Level 3 Autonomous Driving in 2026

[Deleted member 19354]

....soon

My other favourite is “Thank you for being the best part of the Ford Family”

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[Shepherd]

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.

I got my drivers license 40 years ago. Please bring on the robot driving overlords. Humans are terrible terrible drivers. I’m willing to accept some automated driving fatalities. Zero is impossible and just an excuse for not doing anything. Can’t be worse than 40,000 deaths a year in the USA on the road caused by humans.

 

[ChehRob]

FSD should by regulations be limited to smart roads. It has been possible for decades for cameras to monitor roads and transmit road status to vehicles approaching from a few miles ahead. Meantime it might be possible for the current Blue Cruise announce that the car could manage the next 15-30 seconds without the driver paying attention. But I really am convinced that smart roads make the most sense.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

....soon

Don’t be silly. It’s not “soon”, it’s soon™.

 

[jgcom]

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

In my BlueCruise 1.0 experience, night driving with good markings is rock-solid reliable.

Sunny days can be spoiled if the sun is in the sky within 10-20 degrees of the forward direction, particularly on concrete roads that have been worn to the point of being shiny. Good markings can't fix this. On my daily commute on an east-west interstate, the sun interference is mostly when within a few weeks of equinox. To address this, I imagine we would need polarized and/or mechanically-collimated camera sensors, to avoid front-end saturation.

 

[kodiakng]

farley is taking musk's marketing strategy out for a test drive: promise early, delay, delay, deliver subpar product.

 

[Blue highway]

In my BlueCruise 1.0 experience, night driving with good markings is rock-solid reliable.

Sunny days can be spoiled if the sun is in the sky within 10-20 degrees of the forward direction, particularly on concrete roads that have been worn to the point of being shiny. Good markings can't fix this. On my daily commute on an east-west interstate, the sun interference is mostly when within a few weeks of equinox. To address this, I imagine we would need polarized and/or mechanically-collimated camera sensors, to avoid front-end saturation.

polarization is an interesting thought. it seems to me that it could help with tar strip reflection as well. I've had that throw off BC under just the right conditions.

 

[phil]

FSD does well on “boring road” and it’s good in a lot of situations which is still an amazing feast of engineering.

Amazing, yet useless. Or even worse than useless. If I am required to maintain constant vigilance to detect any sudden change from boring to interesting road conditions, that's no better than just driving the damn car myself. Or, I could just relax my vigilance for a moment and possibly kill someone.

But yes, I have no doubt it is impressively engineered.

 

[phil]

farley is taking musk's marketing strategy out for a test drive: promise early, delay, delay, deliver subpar product.

He also copies his weasel word from Musk: "aim". He never promises anything. He simply says they will "aim" for Level 3 in a couple years. Can't get in trouble for aiming, can you? I think I'll aim for Level 5 by next Thursday.

 

[kodiakng]

He also copies his weasel word from Musk: "aim". He never promises anything. He simply says they will "aim" for Level 3 in a couple years. Can't get in trouble for aiming, can you? I think I'll aim for Level 5 by next Thursday.

not to mention that "level 3" and "autonomous" are incongruent - "level 3" is still an assistant, not autonomy.

 

[Mach1E]

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...

FSD frankly SUCKS!!

It’s basically a parlor trick at this point. It can’t drive as well as a human driver, let alone better.

And that’s my bare minimum standard for FSD- it HAS to be better than a human driver.

If not, it’s just driver assistance (makes a human driver better, doesn’t replace the driver).

BC is driver assistance. There are things we do better (like see cars slamming on the brakes way ahead) and things it does better.

 

[MBCook]

Unfortunately it will require BlueCruise Premium. At a price of just $7,500 a week few will ever get to try it out and find out how well it works.

 

[thekat03]

Honestly, I would rather see a different tier of limited access highway for level 3 autonomous driving. Human drivers are rather unpredictable from a computer's perspective, but if all the computers are driving in their own freeway, that's fine. Keep the humans driving to their own freeway where we are paying attention for the forgotten turn indicator before lane change, and the tailgating, and the aggressively fast cars weaving through traffic. While we drivers can handle that, it's hard to program an autonomous system to handle us.

Unfortunately, making an entire extra freeway system isn't practical at all... ?

 

[leehinde]

....soon

summer...

 

[phil]

Honestly, I would rather see a different tier of limited access highway for level 3 autonomous driving. Human drivers are rather unpredictable from a computer's perspective, but if all the computers are driving in their own freeway, that's fine. Keep the humans driving to their own freeway where we are paying attention for the forgotten turn indicator before lane change, and the tailgating, and the aggressively fast cars weaving through traffic. While we drivers can handle that, it's hard to program an autonomous system to handle us.

Unfortunately, making an entire extra freeway system isn't practical at all... ?

I imagine it will not be an extra system, but rather roads will be converted over time from manual to automated-only. Until there are no manual roads left.

Someday. I don't expect I will live to see it. Maybe the first handful of road conversions, though. That could happen within 30 years.

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