Germany Shocked by Tesla FSD

Last week, Tesla made the Full Self Driving software on its cars available to interested parties in Germany and allowed Teslas to drive through German cities. The reactions have been overwhelmingly positive and, at the same time, a shock to the scene. Most people had no personal experience with it until now, and only a few had the opportunity to test this driving system, which is legally approved as Level 2+ but designed and aimed at Level 4, in the US or Canada.

Many people were only familiar with online videos of Tesla owners recording and posting their journeys. And just as many people are primarily familiar with videos showing incidents involving or shortcomings of the system. Of course, these are much more interesting than hours of boring journeys where nothing happens except the FSD confidently mastering every situation.

Even though these drives were impressive, there remained skepticism as to whether the videos of driving on American roads were even comparable to the road situation in Germany. And the unanimous opinion was no, because there were so many differences.

FSD in Germany

But with their first experiences, this skepticism has vanished into thin air. The predominantly negative reporting on Tesla FSD in recent years has completely changed, and positive experiences are now being reported across the board. Testers are both thrilled and shocked at how good FSD is. And that’s just with cameras. This fact was one of the main points of criticism from “experts” and armchair philosophers who, without any personal experience, gave supposedly clever advice from the comfort of their sofas and could list all the reasons why this (American) technology could never work. Especially not in Germany.

And now we are left with a mess. For years, it was proclaimed that autonomous driving would never happen, and if it did, it would be in 10 or 20 years, and that Tesla’s approach, which is based solely on cameras, would have even less chance of success. This was repeated with confidence by experts from automotive companies and automotive journalists, confirmed by driving instructors and safety officers, and readily accepted by skeptical customers with an anti-American or anti-Tesla reflex.

Unfortunately, this led to some consequences that have now turned out to be disastrous. Not only were the efforts of Tesla & Co. dismissed as completely crazy or misguided, but no serious efforts were made to develop autonomous driving systems. These were always just compliance projects so that something could be shown to shareholders and the press.

“Don’t worry, we’re working on it, and we’re better anyway. And actually, nobody wants it because people prefer to drive themselves rather than be driven.”

And now they’re all surprised because Tesla FSD works so well. Tesla FSD definitely still has some catching up to do compared to Waymo Driver, for example. But Waymo Driver has not yet been available in Germany.

It’s not as if this was unpredictable. I myself have been pointing this out for almost a decade now in my book and on the website of the same name, and have outlined the developments. Many in Germany have warned about this and called for action. But none of that helped, because the German automotive industry is too preoccupied with harebrained ideas such as technological openness and preserving the combustion engine. One example of this is the Audi works council with its LinkedIn post from a few days ago.

Bottom Line

The bottom line from all this know-it-all posturing in recent years: Germany has nothing to show for when it comes to autonomous cars. Nothing that could compete on the market. Nothing except the realization that, once again, it has no cards to play when it comes to technology—this time in Germany’s core industry par excellence—and that the others have called its bluff. Our big mouth is now coming back to haunt us. Hard! Very hard!

Reports

Here a comment by Robin Hornig from German daily Bild:

Tesla FSD Supervised sees more than I do. It doesn’t get distracted and never gets tired. I think I’m a good driver, but I can’t match the all-around vision of this system. It’s strongest when both work together: my experience and the constant attention of the Tesla.

Here from Vanessa Lisa Oelmann on LinkedIn:

I had my very first Tesla FSD demo drive—and I’m stunned!😳
Stunned by how well this system now drives. The usual pitfalls of European autopilot? Nada. Instead, I experienced a system that mastered many tricky situations over 48 kilometers. By the way, the drive took place in the dark, which I didn’t mention🌝
There were four errors in total:

Here by Jonas Weckerle:

Is this the “iPhone moment” for German roads?

While we in Germany are still discussing the end of combustion engines and clearance dimensions, it has happened: the first official, approved drive with Tesla FSD (Supervised) in real German city traffic in Giessen. 🤯

EFIEBER has shown that the system can cope with our complex roads. But what really moved me in the comments was not the technology, but the people.

Videos

Here is a small random selection of videos from reporters over the last few days. The tenor is similar everywhere: the testers are impressed by how well FSD works in Germany.

Even when you don’t understand German, the faces of the people are a tell-all.

This article was also published in German.