We started our trip from Lewis Center, Ohio to St. Louis Park, Minnesota on June 17th. This was our first longer trip in the 2025 Model Y we bought last October. We have used FSD very frequently in our local area. It seemed amazing. Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

All was well until we began the run north on the Illinois tollway the morning of the 18th. The car simply could not maintain a steady speed. It kept changing the cruise set-point for no reason we could discern. We arrived in St. Louis Park somewhat flustered by the jerky, distracting, and tiring experience.

The next morning we went out to the car to find a Starbucks for coffee. The car’s nav said nearest was 1400 kilometers away. We did the math to find out how far that was in “real” (yes, we should all be metric and we knew how far it was.) distance and found it to be too far for today’s needs. So, walked across the street and got coffee at a Caribou shop.

Later we left the hotel to visit our family members a few miles away. FSD took us to some unknown location in Minneapolis and parked nicely. We used an iPhone to get from there to where we needed to be. We had two instance of that behavior.

We did soft and hard resets on the car. Starbucks was no longer a day’s drive away, and we could get where we needed to be. Improvement.

We left Minneapolis for Lewis Center on the 22nd. FSD going south to Chicago was a continuous and stressful battle with the cruise control to maintain a constant speed. But we did find the cause. The tollway has three speed limits, one each for cars, buses, and trucks. FSD would reset the speed set-point every time it saw any one of those signs. So, could not use cruise with any comfort on the tollway. Web research offers no hope of an early fix. It’s been that way a while.

As we tried to keep our speed constant and legal, the FSD mode kept changing by itself. Now chill, now hurry, now standard. Another distraction. This thing may be too complex for only two Ph.D.s.

We recharged in Chicago and upon leaving the charging site, FSD tried to drive us into a recently jackhammered area of the road that was as big as the car. I had to jerk the wheel to go around the rubble. And of course the incident survey came up to distract me while I was trying to avoid being stuck in the rubble pit. The rest of the trip required only the unrelenting vigilance of a soldier trying to avoid snipers in an urban setting.

So, rating for FSD? Solid 0 on the course we had to drive. It was distracting in many ways and dangerous to use. A speed limit change chime with a confirmation screen button might earn Tesla a 3.0. Couldn’t cost much.

-George