Tesla FSD 12.5 early impressions suggests improved smoothness

Tesla has released the first software build of Full Self-Driving (FSD) 12.5 and customers have begun sharing their early impressions of the improvements and changes.

Detailed reviews and bugs in this version will come later but you can check the first driving experience with 12.5.0 coming from @AIDRIVR below.

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• By far the smoothest version of FSD ever. The way it approaches stopped traffic, takes off, slows down for turns, etc etc has never felt better. Turns feel drastically improved too, especially around other traffic (like multiple turn lanes). Feels like there’s zero indecisiveness on the steering wheel and feels CONFIDENT
• “creeping” behavior improved, every unprotected turn it has been through so far it creeps and continues without coming to a secondary stop or even slowing back down. Do them in “one motion” if that makes sense. Will obviously need more testing on unprotected turns in general to form a real opinion though
• No more speed control issues where it speeds up and then slows back down (so far, at least). It still does speed a little fast in my neighborhood (33mph in a 25) but stays at a consistent speed now
• I tried to wear sunglasses and it disabled driver monitoring, meaning it still has steering wheel nags with sunglasses on
• Highway still feels like the old stack to me and not end-to-end. Might not have made it into this release. No release notes and it still displays messages on the screen like “changing lanes into faster lane” and has manual speed control (no auto max speed). Also doesn’t feel as smooth as city driving with its acceleration and braking
• My first 35-mile drive to the supercharger was completely intervention-free, charging up to do more testing in Concord, CA now because 12.4 struggled a lot here

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FSD 12.5 early impressions from @DirtyTesLa:

• Smoothness is off the charts, every move felt great.
• Blinking lights are still a weakness, clips coming, but needed accelerator push through a few blinking reds.
• Maybe I’m just better trained, but it did seem to yell at me less for eyes on the road – LESS NAG. And yes, you can wear sunglasses.
• Speed control is way better. FSD never went more than 2/3mph over the limit, which I find acceptable. It would still accelerate pretty good up to speed, and then sometimes slow down a bit after, but all less dramatic than before.
• Besides 2 or 3 accelerator taps for blinking reds, and needing to back us out of a parking spot that the car pulled into, V12.5 took me to 4 destinations with no other interventions. Now I will get some clips up for you. Full drive tomorrow.

To be mentioned, Tesla is yet to release end-to-end high software stack and sunglass support for a new driver monitoring system with the upcoming 12.5.x update.