You’ve seen the videos. A Tesla Model Y rolls off the production line at Giga Texas, navigates 30 minutes of Austin traffic, and delivers itself to a customer’s driveway. No driver. No hands. Just a car acting like a sentient being.
Honestly, it’s the kind of thing that makes you do a double-take.
For years, the internet was a loud, chaotic battlefield over Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD). You had the "it’s a scam" crowd on one side and the "Elon is a genius" cult on the other. But lately? The tesla fsd critics silence is becoming the real story. It isn’t that the skeptics have disappeared—trust me, Dan O’Dowd is still buying ad space—it’s that the goalposts have moved so far that the old arguments just don't land anymore.
The Version 12 Pivot
Everything changed with the shift to "end-to-end" neural networks. Basically, Tesla stopped trying to code every single "if-then" rule into the car. Instead of engineers telling the car, "If you see a red octagon, stop," they just fed the computer millions of hours of video of humans actually driving.
The result? The car started driving like a person.
V12.5 and the newer V13 builds handle "unprotected left turns"—the nightmare scenario for AI—with a weirdly human-like assertiveness. They creep forward. They wait for a gap. They go. It’s no longer a robotic, jerky experience that makes you want to puke. When a system starts working 99% of the time for the average user, the "it's vaporware" argument starts to feel, well, kinda silly.
Why the loud voices went quiet
It’s hard to scream "fraud" when your neighbor’s car just drove them to the grocery store and back without a single intervention.
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- The Data Wall: Tesla just crossed 7 billion miles of FSD data. That’s an astronomical number. To put it in perspective, human drivers in the U.S. crash roughly every 700,000 miles. Tesla’s internal (and controversial) safety hub claims FSD Supervised is currently hitting 5 million miles between major crashes.
- The Consumer Reports Shock: Even the harshest critics are folding. In late 2025, Consumer Reports—a group that has historically treated Tesla like a naughty child—ranked Tesla in its Top 10 auto brands for the first time. They even called the Model 3 and Model Y the most reliable EVs on the market.
- The "Cope" Factor: Many critics have shifted from saying "it will never work" to "it’s not truly Level 5." Sure, that’s technically true. It’s still a "Supervised" system. But the gap between "cool cruise control" and "robotaxi" is shrinking every single week.
Real Talk: The Silence Isn't Absolute
Don't get it twisted. Not everyone is happy.
Dan O’Dowd and The Dawn Project are still out there. They recently went after the new "Mad Max" driving profile, calling it reckless. They’re still running tests with child-sized mannequins, trying to prove the system has "critical safety defects."
But the vibe has changed.
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The criticism feels more like a legal debate now, rather than a technical one. Skeptics aren't arguing that the car can't drive; they're arguing about who is responsible when it fails. And it does fail. V13.2.2.1 actually saw some "regressions" where cars were hugging the lane lines too closely or hesitating on highway curves. It’s a two-steps-forward, one-step-back kind of dance.
The 10-Billion-Mile Goalpost
Elon Musk recently admitted that Tesla needs roughly 10 billion miles of data to hit "safe unsupervised" status.
We’re at about 7.2 billion now.
Mathematically, Tesla should hit that 10-billion mark around July 2026. This is the new "silence" threshold. If Tesla hits 10 billion miles and the "unsupervised" launch in Texas or California still doesn't happen, the critics will come back with a vengeance. They’ll say the "end-to-end" approach hit a ceiling. They’ll say cameras aren't enough and that we need LiDAR.
But for now? The silence is a result of the technology finally catching up to the hype. People are busy using the software instead of arguing about it on X.
What You Should Actually Do
If you’re watching this from the sidelines, wondering if the tesla fsd critics silence means it’s finally time to buy in, here’s the ground truth:
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- Test it yourself: Don't trust a YouTuber or a hater. If you have a Tesla, grab a one-month subscription when a major "point" release (like V13.5 or V14) drops.
- Watch the "intervention" metrics: Follow independent trackers like Whole Mars Catalog or Teslascope. They track real-world "miles per intervention." That’s the only stat that matters.
- Ignore the "Years": When Musk says "this year," add 12 to 18 months. The technology is real, but the timelines are always optimistic.
- Understand the "Supervisor" Role: You are still the pilot. The moment you treat it like a bed on wheels is the moment you become a statistic.
The debate isn't over, but it has definitely entered a new chapter. The skeptics haven't necessarily changed their minds—they're just waiting for the next mistake. But as the miles pile up and the software smooths out, they’re finding fewer and fewer things to shout about.
Stay alert, keep your hands on the wheel, and watch the software version notes. The march toward 10 billion miles is going to be the most interesting part of 2026.