MY BLUE TESLA

For the last fews months I've noticed that the door handles no longer auto-present when I'm walking up to the vehicle. Ah yes, the silent creaking noise of an aging relic while the official neighborhood vehicles (Model Ys) zip past me daily. Attempting to re-pair the existing key fob didn't work. Placing the fob at the center console (as illustrated in the MCU instructions) resulted in the fob not being detected. I can still tap the fob to open the doors though. Hmm...

In addition there's a pristine, unused 11-year old second fob in the house ... somewhere. Just my luck it's nowhere to be found.

According to AI, there's an LF ("low frequency" or "left front" I'm guessing) antenna which might need replacement. A quick check with a few Internet forums via AI points out no such thing, so naturally I assume Claude is hallucinating. Gemini didn't present any better suggestions, and I just cancelled my OpenAI subscription. Decided to skip Copilot and Grok on the assistance.

The last time I paid Tesla Service for anything was back in 2022 for (of course) a door handle problem. I'm at the point in my career where my brain is too wrecked by the end of the day to do extra curricular work so maybe it's time to throw money at the problem to make it go away.

I scheduled a service appointment thinking this would be a Mobile Service visit. I ended up having to go back to the Service Center on Kato Road and from there on almost every interaction with the service team was through the app.

Optimus greeted me to the customer lounge area:

This place looks a bit nicer than the last time I was here:

And what's this - snacks are back? Yay!

While waiting in the service center lobby, it seemed like the staff were really trying to make sure the guests were okay, often checking to make sure everyone was comfortable. There are probably metrics tied to their performance via the follow-up surveys.

Eventually it turns out that my service request for pairing a couple of new fobs wasn't going to solve my problem. A specialist was needed to further diagnose the issue. Instead of providing some Uber credits for a ride home, the service manager offered me a loaner Model Y, one of the new ones with only 2000 miles on the clock. Uh, sure? After tapping a few loaner agreement confirmation buttons in the app, I was presented with a stealth grey dual motor Model Y:

They pointed out that Full Self Driving (Supervised) was something I could try. I haven't kept up with FSD development over the last few years and I figured it's still "just around the corner," per Elon's usual over-promised, over-optimistic appraisal (because: stock price has to go to the moon before SpaceX). This car was running software version 2026.2.9.10, FSD 14.3.2.

So I started driving this thing and ran some errands. This new Model Y is pretty nice and it's hard to find something to complain about. Having all these cameras is pretty damn nice. And no more steering wheel nag. Instead the center eye in the cabin is apparently watching me.

The FSD toggle kept staring at me like some demanding pop-up ad or cookie consent notification whenever I visit any website these days.

Fine. Enabled.

Let's see how fast it fails. Maybe I should record video and make yet another random Internet post about how much this things sucks.

So it drove me home, and I had to interrupt it a couple of times since I didn't realize this thing does automated lane changes (well of course it does!) - I'm too used to original Autopilot.

I decided to drive to my girlfriend's house 1.5 hours away through commute traffic. Surely it wouldn't be able to get past a few exits until nearly crashing into a few "student drivers" on the road (we have an abundance of these self-declared students in the Bay Area).

And unbelievably FSD took me from my driveway, through the freeway and commute traffic, all the way to her house ... AND parked in her driveway next to her car. All without me ever touching the steering wheel or stepping on a pedal. Whoa. And the transitions (braking, lane changing, etc.) were pretty smooth. The braking in particular was definitely a lot smoother than what my Autopilot v1 can do.

It was a bit surreal, surely it wouldn't be able to do this again? So we went out for dinner and once again FSD drove us from the driveway all the way to the restaurant where it effortlessly backed into a parking spot directly in front of the restaurant doors.

Wut.

After dinner I decided to tap Start Self-Driving without entering a destination. It got onto the main road and went straight. Maybe it would find its way back to the previous starting point? Not really, it just kept driving straight down the road, missing a couple of potential freeway onramps. After finally entering a destination in the nav it made its way back to her house (although it tried to enter her next door neighbor's driveway).

So, wow? Has FSD finally exited beta?

I'd say this experience was a bit smoother than being in a Waymo last year. My girlfriend even mentioned how much of a better driver FSD is compared to me. How insulting...

The next day I got notification that Tesla Service needed another day with Big Blue, which means I get to drive this Model Y some more. So later on in the evening we ended up at the Tesla Fremont factory Supercharger to witness modern Tesla charging speeds:

Soooooo much faster. While Big Blue has free lifetime Supercharging, I'm envious. I don't think I've ever gotten anything above 105 kW in the last 5 years, even with the battery nearly depleted.

We also started having a conversation with Grok about random topics. What a technological marvel this is. It's a peek into the Future.

Meanwhile the latest diagnostic assessment for Big Blue upped the estimate quite a bit and it looks like one of the door wiring harnesses needed replacement. They mentioned that I had aftermarket speakers in the door and during that install the harness might've been damaged/pinched resulting in an open wire causing the LH antenna to not consistently function.

I'm certain it wasn't the aftermarket speakers but rather me having removed that door card dozens of times to dampen rattles by layering in patches of closed cell foam messily all over the place. I'm not surprised something got damaged. It's a risk I accepted when I did all that work.

Anyway the estimate came out to $1,227.51. Ouch. But I'll deal with it.

The comment in the invoice about the headlight adjustment and the interior trim/moving glass bit I'm unsure of. To be fair, I did replace the driver's side headlight bulb last year. I don't know how my work on the interior trim would affect that, unless the tech's referring to some other kind of interior trim.

The next day I returned the loaner. I was sad to see it go. I also noticed that I had used up the existing Grok token allowance. Perhaps loaners have an extremely limited amount per 24 hour period.

Certainly a compelling vehicle and it sells itself. I'm not willing to pay for another depreciating asset though, but if I did get this I'd certainly consider the FSD subscription. I never thought I'd hear myself say that.