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2019 M3P 6 Month Review

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I've had my M3P for a couple of months now and do a considerable amount of driving (100mi+/day on I80 in Tahoe). Let's start with saying this is by far the best car I've ever owned. It is so much fun to drive, very very comfortable, has so many features that I wish every car had and I have zero regrets buying it. It has its flaws though, and this will vary heavily driver to driver as things that bother me most likely will not bother the average driver, but this information may be important for a prospective buyer.

I bought the car used with FSD (but not the beta) active so I have access to all the features that includes and you'll see those detailed below.
  • Autopilot is obviously still in its infancy, and I understand that. However, there are very simple driving mechanics that it struggles with that baffles me. When in the right-most lane (US) and an on-ramp ends the car will aggressively center itself between the two lines that are MUCH larger since the lanes have merged. If it does not see the arrows on the ground it will panic turn to the left to avoid it then disengage autopilot. Basically, from a 3rd person perspective it looks as though you yanked the steering wheel to the right and then to the left rapidly. I wish the car would define the lane to the left of you as being the main tracking point, as it is much less common for the left lane to end and merge into you, and this would prevent this harsh driving style. Just seems weird that the car tries to find the middle of two lines it can see (even if they are 6+ meters wide) and doesn't understand a merging lane. This prevents me from using the right lane on most occasions since the left lane/middle lanes don't have this problem.
    • Traffic aware cruise control works.. but not ideally. I've never had an issue with it tracking cars in front of me, the issue comes with the distance it keeps from the car in front of you. Let's say you're driving 55 mph with the distance set at 5 (which is where I usually keep it). Traffic then slows slightly down to 45 mph. The tesla will approach the car until it is very very close.. like uncomfortably close for a computer driving it (probably 1 car length behind). When traffic accelerates back to 55 mph it then takes an infuriating amount of time to accelerate leaving a massive gap (6+ car lengths) even if you have the speed set to 90 mph. It seems to carry over to issues in FSD Beta I've read about where the car seems afraid to accelerate. This is not an issue in my 2018 Outback with it's adaptive cruise control. It decelerates and accelerates consistently based on how far away the car is in front of you. Even at low speeds the tesla will both get incredibly close to the car in front and take an eternity to accelerate once the front car has moved away.
      • In bumper to bumper traffic it's even worse. If the car comes to a complete stop, it will wait a couple of seconds after the car in front of you moves then accelerates hard (??) up to ~15mph then slam on the brakes when it comes up to the car in front of you. It will do this over and over again instead of just coasting while keeping distance between itself and the forward car. I feel I can't use cruise control in heavy traffic because of how uncomfortable it is going back and forth. Sucks the car steers for itself but still is less efficient in heavy traffic then cars that cost half the price.
    • Traffic Light/Stop Sign Beta works very very well, actually impressively so. Only issue is when there are signs that look anything remotely like a stop light it will think it is one and slow down quickly. There are lots of these signs pretty much everywhere, I wish there was some integration with the maps/autopilot so a sign in the middle of a straightaway with no crossroads for miles around is not tagged as a stoplight.
  • Live camera sentry mode monitoring in app leaves a lot to be desired. It's nice to be able to see what's going on around your car at any time but whenever you open the camera the car will flash the lights as if sentry mode was triggered. This is pretty annoying because I don't like drawing attention to the car for no reason and it is something that cannot be disabled.
  • Dashcam struggles constantly to remain connected and getting it setup was an ordeal. I've never had a problem with any computer, literally ever, moving files to a usb/ssd. Tesla runs its system on Linux (at least on mine), and has pretty decent hardware. For it to constantly need to format my ssd/usb is pretty annoying, and playback is very laggy/constantly drops random footage even on my samsung s7 ssd. It also won't format from the car. It will fail to format and I have to take it to my computer to format it before re-formatting it in the tesla in hopes it will work on the 3rd try.
    • For those who are new with this and are having these problems you can find the solution here. (Place "TeslaCam" folder in root dir. manually, this is the step that stumped me for a while)
  • Auto High Beams/Auto Windshield Wipers are pretty bad at being "auto". IMO auto-high beams shouldn't exist on any car cause they either don't turn off or turn off when they've already basically passed you, and this is the same with the tesla. They generally won't turn off at all (I think they've turned off once since I got the car). Wipers will work 1/5 times but generally it needs to be dumping rain to register. Fog/mist it just ignores it.
  • FSD Safety Score Beta has to be the most maddening thing about this car. *If you don't plan to enroll in FSD Beta or use Tesla Insurance ignore this section*
    • Forward Collision Warning occurs when the car believes it is likely to get into a collision without intervention. This takes a major hit to your safety score. I generally commute at 4am in a pretty rural area. Little to no traffic, but I'll get FCW about once a week. The alert that popped up in my car most recently had me at a stop sign turning right onto an empty road with nobody around. Not sure what could have caused it but for those 100 miles driven that day I had a safety score of 86. This will also occur frequently when in a parking garage going up a ramp. Instead of curbing my rims I slowly crawl relatively close to the wall but this counts as a FCW, negatively impacting the score.
    • Hard Braking is a pretty absurd scoring factor. It has a large influence on your safety score even if there is nothing you can do to prevent it. Hard braking will trigger when you "brake with excessive force" i.e >0.3g force. What isn't said here is that "braking with excessive force" is the equivalent of letting your foot off the gas with regen braking set to normal. How does that make sense? If I don't want to get dinged for hard braking I can't use normal regen braking. I haven't used my brakes much at all since I got the car and have purposely not used them to test if this was true (and it was). Oh this also encourages running yellow lights so yeah I do that now, but hey higher safety score is good right?
    • Unsafe following is rated really low for the actual safety implications it has. I can be right on the car in front of me for miles and miles but end with a mild ding of 2-3% while if I stop for a yellow light I can get hit for almost 5%. Just doesn't seem balanced.
    • If you want to ever get FSD you can't go to the track. Even on closed courses you get a safety score, make sure not to turn at >0.4g or brake at >0.3g!
Things I wish existed in my M3P
  • Full Google Maps implementation
    • Navigation is fantastic, one of the best parts about this car. It is basically google maps, but not quite. While it has traffic visualization, google earth maps, and constantly updated map data it lacks road information. The lines for traffic are relatively difficult to see. Using Android Auto in my subaru I get notices of collisions ahead, traffic delay times, construction zones, road closure information, speed trap locations, other things that just make sense. I really wish Tesla had this as well, it would be such a great addition to an already great navigation system.
  • Vehicle Visualization Zoom Control
    • On the main screen we get a live view of our car and surroundings virtually. You are able to zoom this out manually, spin it around etc to get a 360 view of your car and everything around it while driving. It's actually impressive how far it can zoom out and register cars around you. Unfortunately, it zooms back in completely after a few seconds. Since the function exists why not allow it to remain at whatever zoom you set it to so you can see your surroundings completely? Would be great as an additional check for those blind spots (I like to know what's going on around me while driving and yes there is a camera option but you either have to have your blinker on or have the camera app open dominating the right side of the display).
  • More Locations to disable Walk-Away Door Lock
    • For sentry mode/standby mode you can select home/work/favorites. Why not have the same options for walk away door lock?
  • More Settings for regen braking
    • This kind of ties into the hard braking rant I had above. With the M3P I can use track mode to adjust how strong the regenerative braking is in the car and make it so it doesn't trigger the "excessive braking force". Would be amazing if this was available in non-track mode as track mode removes all the safety features and puts the car into overdrive. When you drive a consistent route day after day you generally know how much braking force you need to slow at certain locations. As of now I have to hover the gas pedal slightly to prevent my safety score from falling when I should be prepared to use the normal brake in case of emergency. Once again, the feature is there it's just not available.
  • More settings for drive modes
    • Chill/Sport are dramatically different from each other. Like 400 hp different. Would be awesome if there was something in the middle of the two. I don't need to be thrown into the seat at 25% throttle in sport but would like some force when flooring in chill. Personal opinion :)
  • A "Home" Button
    • From the start I knew the main screen would be a major distraction, and it is. But the main problem I have is getting the screen back to the map since you have to either swipe down on the screen or press the icon of the app you're using to close the menu. Wish there was a way to bind one of the keys on the steering wheel to close all windows and bring the map back up to prevent having to look at the screen while closing apps.

I'd like to reiterate my statement about how amazing this car is. This may look bad at first glance but believe me I love this car. Just wish things were a bit better on the software side of things. But that's the amazing thing about Tesla's! These problems very well could be fixed in the next update, literally everything hardware/mechanical about this car is perfection.

TL;DR car go vroom much fun but no want drive itself good and make me look crazy
 
Aside from FSD (which I do not have), it seems like you've been eavesdropping on my conversations with my wife. I have complained about almost exactly your list! While I can choose to not use auto wipers or headlights, I wish we had a basic CC mode (no TACC). I've had a few phantom braking adventures that I care not to repeat.

That said, this is hands down the coolest car I've ever owned (or driven). I just decided that fact outweighs any of the car's (or Tesla's) quirks.
 
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Aside from FSD (which I do not have), it seems like you've been eavesdropping on my conversations with my wife. I have complained about almost exactly your list! While I can choose to not use auto wipers or headlights, I wish we had a basic CC mode (no TACC). I've had a few phantom braking adventures that I care not to repeat.

That said, this is hands down the coolest car I've ever owned (or driven). I just decided that fact outweighs any of the car's (or Tesla's) quirks.
Wheew. Glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. If normal CC was available I'd probably only use that!
 
I recently switched to formatting my sdcard using the ext4 filesystem. I read on this forum that helps get rid of the issue with having to reformat the sdcard on a regular basis. It has only been 3 days, so not sure if this fix will stop the problem, but so far, so good. I love my M3P too!
 
I recently switched to formatting my sdcard using the ext4 filesystem. I read on this forum that helps get rid of the issue with having to reformat the sdcard on a regular basis. It has only been 3 days, so not sure if this fix will stop the problem, but so far, so good. I love my M3P too!
What year is your M3P if you don't mind me asking?
 
So what are you doing different? I'm using a Anker card reader with a high speed sdcard.
Ok, I think that's your problem. I used to use a similar setup, and was having issues with the card getting corrupt and having to re-format every few weeks. Then I found some posts suggesting that it's better to plug in an SSD hard drive. I purchased this but that was over 3 years ago so there may be better options: Samsun T5 500GT SSD
 
Ok, I think that's your problem. I used to use a similar setup, and was having issues with the card getting corrupt and having to re-format every few weeks. Then I found some posts suggesting that it's better to plug in an SSD hard drive. I purchased this but that was over 3 years ago so there may be better options: Samsun T5 500GT SSD
I've been using the T7 ssd and it disconnects constantly/"corrupts" and requires formatting. Sometimes it will resolve itself but the fact it has issues in any way when moving video files from computer->storage baffles me