Tesla FSD head to head against Mercedes Driver Assist on the same road [video]

The user that created that video is known to have preference for Tesla (based on Twitter posts and their YouTube channel is all about Tesla), the video may be biased.<p>The Consumer Reports comparison at the beginning of the video is Mercedes &quot;Driver Assistance&quot; vs Tesla &quot;Autopilot&quot;. These are technologies for lane assistance, speed limit assistance, etc. &quot;Advanced cruise control&quot; is a better term for these. This video does not compare these.<p>Mercedes self driving system is called &quot;Drive Pilot&quot;. Tesla&#x27;s is called &quot;FSD&quot; (Full Self Driving)<p>This video compares FSD to Drive Assist, these are two different types of technologies.

To quote one of the commenters:<p>&gt; 2. They were using an non-geofenced level 2 highway adaptive cruise system for Mercedes, NOT the level 3 system which is only available in Germany. The level 2 system was never designed for city streets and have limitations on sharp turns, if this would an honest video they would compare autopilot vs drive pilot on the highway, which they won&#x27;t do because drive pilot is better.

By many accounts, Tesla FSD has improved rapidly, now feels &quot;very human,&quot; and will soon have greater adoption than any other self-driving software.[a]<p>Speaking from personal experience, I&#x27;ve tested the most recent version of Supervised FSD, v12.3.6, and it&#x27;s <i>much better</i> than most people realize.<p>Once Tesla stops requiring human supervision, I expect FSD adoption rate to go &quot;hockey-stick.&quot;<p>---<p>[a] Based on a conversion rate for Tesla &quot;Supervised FSD&quot; free trials of ~2%: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;RealTesla&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1cp5pgj&#x2F;tsla_fsd_free_trial_conversion_reached_2_for_all&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;RealTesla&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1cp5pgj&#x2F;tsla_fsd...</a>

Since Mercedes Drive Assist is SAE Level 2 and supported only on highways, the high number of interventions is a feature and not a bug.<p>The Mercedes driver seemed to be engaged and attentive, and therefore not likely to play a video game, watch a movie, and stop paying attention causing a crash.<p>It would be interesting to see Mercedes Drive Pilot (SAE Level 3) compared to Tesla FSD. That feature is not generally available in the US.

Unless there is a change in how autonomous driving software is trained, it seems Tesla is destined to dominate that market, right?<p>Tesla has the most training data consisting of video input + corresponding driver behavior. And they have the most compute power.<p>Which twist of fate could happen, so that Tesla falls behind in the future?<p>I could imagine that there is an invention which lets AI learn about the world by just observing and thinking. Without the need for &quot;training&quot; in the form of &quot;if you see this, do this&quot;. But as far as I know, this is not on the horizon yet.

How do Mercedes and Tesla differ in terms of accountability when there is inevitably an accident? Tesla is known for turning off their assistance at the last possible moment in order to blame the driver. Mercedes assumes liability.<p>Seems like that is the real debate. Tesla weasels and whines, Mercedes steps up.

Doesn&#x27;t Mercedes guarantee level 3 only on certain stretches of road? Shouldn&#x27;t a better comparison take place there?

Watching this video, I am impressed by how well FSD works! Watching FSD crash videos, though, I am reminded by the many spectacular failure modes of SAE Level &lt;4 driving systems on public roads.<p>The NHTSA reported in April that most fatal FSD crashes involved no driver intervention, or driver intervention only in the last 1 second, and in all cases an attentive driver could have perceived and taken steps to lessen the severity of damage and injuries in the crash.<p>For anything less than SAE Level 4, the human MUST take over driving when requested. The question is, can we? Sign up for the beta test and find out, I guess!<p>Personally I would much prefer a new Mercedes E class wagon with Driver Assist (Distronic) to a Tesla with FSD.

I was surprised to see so many driver interventions on the Mercedes side - 44 vs 0 by the end of the 20 minute video. Maybe that&#x27;s why it&#x27;s branded &quot;Driver Assist&quot; and not FSD, so not a true comparison.<p>Also, a little funny to see a random Model Y appear just ahead of the Mercedes at the end of the video.

I was blown away recently by the sophistication of Tesla self-driving when I visited the bay area.. the one mistake it made was missing the correct path within SFO to drop me off at the correct terminal... that was a surprising mistake and I didn&#x27;t have time to see if it would circle around and get it right this second time

Isn&#x27;t the premise of this video of the Consumer Reports comparison a bit of red herring?<p>It seems like Consumer Reports is comparing Mercedes Driver Assistance with Tesla <i>Autopilot</i> and then the video goes on to compare it to Tesla <i>FSD</i>.<p>Obviously, the average person doesn&#x27;t know there&#x27;s a difference and may be misinformed by CR to believe that Tesla sucks, but we can acknowledge here that Tesla Autopilot is very meh compared to FSD, and it&#x27;s entirely feasible that Mercedes has a justified better rating between these systems, even if FSD is light years ahead.

Same deal with openpilot. Comma team claims they’re “solving self-driving cars” anytime people mention perception improvements or quality of ride concerns. openpilot basically can’t turn at intersections anymore.

Apples vs oranges

And yet speed limit detection and phantom breaking in my Tesla has only gotten worse the last year, or do FSD improvements not trickle down to non-FSD?

Tesla has spent more billions on ML than any corporation in the world. I can’t wait to book my first FSD robotaxi ride at some point in the next decade.

Mercedes? Pick an easier competition?<p>As much as European cars have a favorable reputation among American consumers: They are awful!<p>If you do benchmarking, you are going to find European cars have lots of appearance parts that are high quality, but the actual components are poor.<p>A more realistic comparison would be to compare Tesla vs Ford or GM. These are 3 companies that have similar tech&#x2F;culture standards. This video is like comparing AMD to Apple.