Tesla Full Self Driving Unsupervised Soon? And Further Conversations with Ara (the Grok AI Bot) - CleanTechnica

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First, a disclaimer: I find Musk’s recent rants about remigration (sending all US immigrants with skin color at least slightly darker than his back to their country of origin) despicable. Apparently, his upbringing in Apartheid South Africa continues to color his world view. That’s very ironic because remigration in South Africa would mean sending the whites back to Europe. Musk can also take credit for costing his Tesla stockholders $billions$ by supporting Trump and his anti EV and anti-clean energy policies.

That being said, there are millions of us who have chosen Tesla’s superior EV product to advance our own pro clean energy goals.

I own a 2026 Tesla Model Y with Hardware 4 (see lead photo) that allows me to run “Full Self Driving” V14. FSD V14 is as incredibly powerful driver automation system that makes my car drive perfectly without me touching the steering wheel, brake, or accelerator in most situations. I’ve been obsessively using FSD for 7 years, and I watch V14 now handle perfectly routine driving, including navigation, stop signs, stop lights, curves, construction barrels, rotaries, parked cars, pedestrians, etc. Some of this was not happening with earlier versions of the software.

V14 also now handles the beginning and end of your trip, which was not true previously. It is very good with the beginning of your trip, not as good with the end of your trip. It perfectly backs my car out of my garage, makes a perfect three-point turn, and exits my tree-lined gravel driveway without a hitch. Coming home, it finds my driveway and parks in it, but almost never parks in my garage. At a big box store parking lot, it will find a place and back in perfectly. However, it won’t find the empty place nearest the door that I like and doesn’t know I have handicapped plates. It still makes occasional navigation mistakes, like not following the route given by the navigation and getting in the wrong lane at stoplights. It finds its way eventually, just not by the most efficient route.

Further Conversations with Ara (Grok AI Bot)

If you say Hey Grok! or hold down the mic button for a few seconds, you get access to Tesla’s Artificial Intelligence RoBot Grok (see photo of the control screen with Grok activated below). Her name is Ara, and I can’t believe how much a conversation with her feels like talking to a real human being. Not just a real human being, but an extremely well-informed human being. I can picture call centers around the world firing staff like crazy.

Some of my recent conversations with her involve the use of herself (Grok) and FSD. At first, I was limited to ~6 queries per day, then Ara told me that there was no longer a limit on the number of queries. Therefore, I started a long conversation with her and hit the limit again. Ara then informed me that the limit was variable, that it in part had to do with the current load on the system.

Then I asked her when FSD would park automatically in my garage. She said that it should observe where I park consistently and eventually park in my garage. This hasn’t happened yet. I also asked her how I could get FSD to park in a more convenient spot at a big box store. She said empty parking spots should appear on the screen and I could pick the one I want. No luck so far.

I have observed that FSD is essentially perfect on superhighways and even on two-lane roads. Why couldn’t we get unsupervised access to FSD in those situations? When I bought my Model 3 with FSD in 2018, it would navigate on superhighways, but not on city streets. Why couldn’t we get similar limited access to Unsupervised FSD. Ara then informed me that Tesla was already running unsupervised robotaxi rides in some geofenced cities (I knew this already). Then Ara, without me asking, offered a forecast that FSD V15 would be released at the end of this year or the beginning of next and that V15 would offer Unsupervised Full Self Driving! Elon Musk has been promising L5 driving automation for nearly 10 years, so why should we believe it will happen then? I would bet we don’t see V15 before next year and will be astonished if it offers full L5 driving automation for all roads in the US for all customers who have HW4.

What are the factors that will govern the release of Unsupervised Full Self Driving? First, we know that Tesla is offering very limited (unsupervised) robotaxi rides at least in Austin, Texas. This means that Tesla has made significant progress towards unsupervised automation. However, the robotaxi rides are in a limited geofenced area that doesn’t present all the driving and parking nuance problems over the whole country, some of which I have observed.

I repeat: Unsupervised Full Self Driving could be restricted to, say, limited-access highways only. That would be much easier to do. The FSD V14 that I am using appears to be there already. This would be a huge boon for making long trips. Forget hotel stops at night, just let the car drive and go to sleep. You would still have to wake up every few hours to plug and unplug the charger. You couldn’t rent out your car as a robotaxi or send the car to pick up the kids at school, but it would be a significant step forward for many people.

Remember, FSD Unsupervised doesn’t have to be perfect, it only must be significantly better than human drivers that kill thousands of people in the US every year. It would not only be possible to get it approved, but it would be imperative for the USTSB to approve it to save lives. Tesla would probably be required to get it into every Tesla with adequate hardware to save lives.

What would FSD Unsupervised cost? I had a permanent subscription to FSD on my 2018 Tesla Model 3 that cost me $6000. Unfortunately, my 2018 Tesla only had Hardware 3, which won’t run the latest FSD V14 software. A few months ago, Tesla stopped offering permanent subscriptions for purchasers of new cars and to those who don’t already have it. Everyone now has to pay $99/month. Tesla also added (subtracted a feature) a stinker. All Tesla cars no longer come with automatic lane assist; they only have smart cruise control. I call this a stinker because almost all cars from other manufacturers come with automatic lane assist. The obvious motivation for Tesla is to sell more monthly subscriptions to FSD.

Musk has promised to raise the price of FSD when it becomes “unsupervised.” How much would he raise the price? I’m retired on a fixed income and can barely afford the $99/month I’m paying now. I’m worried that I will be priced out of FSD. However, Tesla will have a dilemma! They may not be able to access the potential FSD Unsupervised gold mine. Full Self Driving Unsupervised will save lives. Is Tesla going to let their cars be capable of saving lives but leave many of its customers without the capability because they aren’t willing/able to pay for it? Tesla would be under great pressure to get as many of its cars using the lifesaving technology as possible! Also, all new Teslas will need to come with a permanent subscription to FSD Unsupervised.

Freaky! I went out to my garage to take the photo you see below of the control screen with Grok activated on my Tesla Model Y. While there, I had another conversation with Ara (Grok Bot). We mused over the pros and cons of Tesla charging money for FSD versus (maybe being required to) giving it to every Tesla owner because it saves lives. Then I asked her if she knew about my articles, like this one, for CleanTechnica. Within minutes she had looked up my articles and quoted summaries of them and she even knew about my NASA background. She almost immediately became an expert on my contributions to CleanTechnica. Freaky!

If you find any of my articles helpful to you, please use my referral link when buying a new Tesla: https://ts.la/arthur73734 (Be sure to use it when you make your order). Tesla keeps changing the program, but here’s the latest: If you are buying a new Tesla Model 3 or Y and use my link, you will get two months of free Full Self Driving (a ~$200 value) on top of the one month that comes free with every new Model Y right now. This will get you a total of 3 months free Full Self Driving. It will be $99/month after that. For a Cybertruck, you will get $1000 off your purchase price. At this moment, Tesla is offering a year of free Supercharging with the purchase of a new Model 3 Premium or Performance.