On July 30th, Caijing News (editor: Shi Zhengcheng) reported that in the earnings conference call last week,$Tesla (TSLA.US)$During the earnings conference call last week, Musk once again mentioned the advanced driving assist system called Full Self-Driving (FSD) and said, "I find that most people don't actually understand how good this system is, and I encourage everyone to better understand this system by trying it out yourself and letting the car take you for a spin."

Truist Securities analyst William Stein, who covers Tesla, took advantage of this opportunity to let his Model Y take him and his son for a spin around town. He came back and wrote a report to his clients saying that he had to intervene personally or there would have been a crash.

Stein also questioned Tesla's delayed autonomous taxi launch in October, saying he was confused about what the company might show.

Two test drives.

As background, Stein initially tried FSD after Tesla released its financial report in April. He used it for the second time this month. Both times were in the suburbs of New York, on similarly sunny and dry days. After the first use, Stein gave a favorable rating of 'amazing but not actually useful right now,' but after his close call this month, his latest evaluation was 'no better and possibly worse.'

Stein said that during this month's test, when a car in front of him turned right only halfway through the intersection, the Model Y attempted to accelerate through the intersection. If he hadn't intervened, the crash would have happened for sure.

Another reason Stein received negative reviews was the tolerance of the FSD system. He no longer needs to hold the steering wheel to keep the autonomous driving system running, and even if the driver's eyes are off the road, the system can continue to run for a while.

Stein wrote in the report: 'I turned my head completely away from the road and asked my son to watch out for danger on the road. Then the car continued to drive autonomously for 20-40 seconds before the warning came up.'

In addition to the close call, Stein had to take control of the FSD system when a police officer gestured for the Tesla to pull over and wait on the side of the road for a funeral procession to pass. Additionally, in this test, the FSD system changed lanes twice on a solid white line segment on the highway where lane changes were explicitly prohibited.

Stein concluded that Tesla's FSD system is indeed amazing, but is nowhere near solving the 'automatic' (driving) problem.

Removing the hype.

On Monday, Tesla surged 5.6% after being named a 'top pick' by Morgan Stanley's automotive team. However, Adam Jonas, Morgan Stanley's chief automotive analyst, said in the report that Tesla's other businesses are more appealing than autonomous driving.

Jonas wrote in the report that although Tesla is still making cars, the company is actively redeploying incremental resources, technology, personnel, and capital from the automotive side. The situation is increasingly clear, and embodied intelligence in non-automotive fields may have much more business opportunities and faster deployment speeds than self-driving cars.

Editor / jayden