.48 feels like AP2 finally passed AP1

[Electroman]

That explanation makes a lot of sense. The car thinks you are still on the highway and so it doesn't expect such sharp curves and so it has to make a decision between:

- override its understanding that it is in a highway, and so assume that curve it is detecting is legitimate, and slow down enough to take that curve
- or assume that its curve detection is incorrect and so continue to believe that it is still in a highway, and so slow down only to a pre-programmed acceptable level.

It took the later choice given the circumstances of how parallel and close you were to the highway.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Have you seen or can you think of a counterexample to this?

One you’ll hear a lot about with AP1 cars: reflectors running along the bottom of semis. If it sees that and decides it’s a lane line, your car will become quite lustful for that truck.

 

[daktari]

the tech referred to this lower limit as "ego speed", and said that the steering wheel had already turned to the maximum extent Autopilot would allow at that speed

Interesting, maybe that is why it drift out of lane so often on my drives? I feel AP1 is more eager to increase turn ratio than AP2. Maybe they should adjust this, and also go below ego-speed if wheels are turned/above some lateral g-limit.

 

[GoTslaGo]

I posted the following in the „2017.50.3.f3425a1 is out!“ thread but I think it could be of value here too. It‘s a demonstration of how (well) AP 2 is doing on Swiss roads that are not that wide with long straights as in e.g. the States. There are still quirks but IMHO they are predictable if you‘re used to driving with AP.

I just finished and published my first Autopilot video. It shows a ~18 minutes drive on a highway with a construction zone, some town-connecting rural roads and some local roads through towns here in Switzerland. As we are a small and dense country with not that wide streets in general it's maybe a different view on autopilot for those coming from the States.

Here are some situations you'll see in the video:

@0:54 AP engaged in construction zone with red temporary markings (over/besides regular white markings)
@2:10 Auto lane change suspended until "Holding Wheel" confirmed
@5:44 Smooth stop behind car at red light
@7:35 AP recognises bicycle lane
@8:21 Autosteer is heading for curb in a long s-curve
@8:45 Quite good uphill crest handling by AP
@9:14 Some tricky passages with traffic refuge followed by bicycle lane beginnings
@9:45 Safe passing a cyclist on bicycle lane (no slowdown, maybe recognised as not on lane or completely missed by AP)
@10:06 Following a car in a tricky situation
@12:24 Stopping behind a car for a red light directly after a blind bend
@13:46 Passing a road-parked car (wide lane, AP stays to the left) followed by a smooth stop behind car for pedestrian crossing street
@15:52 Autosteer hugs inner line of a wide left curve with lane dividing traffic poles (I think it would have hit some cones if I did not disengage)

Happy to receive feedback

Thanks for the video. However shorter ones may be more viewable (or get more views).

 

[Ludus]

Tesla really should have a feature for owners who want to opt in to simply flag every AP anomaly they experience and add verbal comments to explain and annotate.

 

[Ben W]

That explanation makes a lot of sense. The car thinks you are still on the highway and so it doesn't expect such sharp curves and so it has to make a decision between:

- override its understanding that it is in a highway, and so assume that curve it is detecting is legitimate, and slow down enough to take that curve
- or assume that its curve detection is incorrect and so continue to believe that it is still in a highway, and so slow down only to a pre-programmed acceptable level.

It took the later choice given the circumstances of how parallel and close you were to the highway.

Well, except that the route (including the offramp/curve/etc.) was already punched into the Nav. Wouldn't an optimal Autopilot system want to take that into account?

Also, given that there were two very conflicting possibilities and not enough information to choose between them (given that the Nav was ignored), there was a perfectly sensible third option, which was for Autopilot to beep loudly and immediately direct the driver to retake control. I wonder how many false positives this would result in, or what factors led Tesla to draw the line (so to speak) where they did?

But, ultimately, it seems that the car did detect and follow the curve just fine, and simply didn't realize that the speed limit was no longer 65mph. If it had realized it was entering a 20mph zone, everything would have worked just fine I think.

I'll try it again in a year and see if the situation has improved

 

[WannabeOwner]

I can't use autopilot until stopping

This seems utterly daft to me. Can't remember when it came in, but on AP1 it used to be that AP disengaged at 90 MPH, and then there was an update and Penalty introduced of "must stop".

So ... upshot is I'm driving the safest car on the planet, in AP mode where I have the benefit of either Car or Driver spotting a life-threatening situation. Except if I have once nudged over 90 MPH on AP and then all extra safety features are denied me (unless I pull off the highway, and do the PARK thing).

Cruising at 80 MPH it is trivially easy to hit 90 MPH, without any BWM wanting a race ... happens often enough to me that I know that ... car coming up behind and I courteously want to complete my overtaking move and pull over for him; approaching a car that will have to brake for forward-traffic, so I speed up to allow him to pull out behind me; and so on.

I seem to have completely failed to re-engineer my brain to "If you accelerate than wiggle steering wheel too" so that AP disengages ... so I get the Penalty instead. Nuts.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Well, except that the route (including the offramp/curve/etc.) was already punched into the Nav. Wouldn't an optimal Autopilot system want to take that into account?

Depends on the nav and system at hand. If the maps are good enough and have those temporary speed limits and such, sure. If not, then no.

Of course, REALLY optimal would be reading the signs itself, since physical signs can be updated/changed temporarily faster than it can be picked up by whatever database.

 

[buttershrimp]

This seems utterly daft to me. Can't remember when it came in, but on AP1 it used to be that AP disengaged at 90 MPH, and then there was an update and Penalty introduced of "must stop".

So ... upshot is I'm driving the safest car on the planet, in AP mode where I have the benefit of either Car or Driver spotting a life-threatening situation. Except if I have once nudged over 90 MPH on AP and then all extra safety features are denied me (unless I pull off the highway, and do the PARK thing).

Cruising at 80 MPH it is trivially easy to hit 90 MPH, without any BWM wanting a race ... happens often enough to me that I know that ... car coming up behind and I courteously want to complete my overtaking move and pull over for him; approaching a car that will have to brake for forward-traffic, so I speed up to allow him to pull out behind me; and so on.

I seem to have completely failed to re-engineer my brain to "If you accelerate than wiggle steering wheel too" so that AP disengages ... so I get the Penalty instead. Nuts.

It's daft, but I will say, this is the first time it's happened to me organically, my car says I was stupid enough to take the bait of another driver.... floor it for a second while already going about 80 on autopilot and then I'm locked out. But I agree, I should have been able to hit the voice command and say "sorry" and get my AP back.

 

[Need]

My new MX 75D has to go into service and I got an older MS 85 as loaner. This is the first time I drive a MS. I am pretty sure it has AP1. Before I got my MX, I was reading here that AP1 is better than EAP (AP2?). I have driven the loan MS for about 100 miles on AP1 now and I have to say that I think EAP is much better than the AP1 except in 1 thing. Here are the differences I noticed:

1) The acceleration is more sudden and rougher in AP1. When I have top speed set to 75mph and stuck behind a slow car driving 55, I would signal to auto change lane. With AP1, the car speed up like there is no tomorrow to 75. EAP is a slower to start and pick up the speed after a while.

2) Autosteer in AP1 does a ton more little turns even on a straight lane, especially in traffic. I have my hands on the wheel all the time so I can feel every single turns. It goes like this: little left.. little left... little left...getting close to left lane line.. big right.. back to center of the lane. I drove my MX on autopilot for over 500 miles and it always kept the car in the dead center of the lane. I don't remember feeling these little jerky tiny movement of the wheel even on turns let alone a straight lane.

3) EAP distance of 4 is about the same as AP1 distance of 2.5 (3 seems a little too far, 2 seems a little too close). It is not really a pos or neg, I just noticed the difference. EAP 4 is about the same distance I would kept driving 70 mph so it is easy for me to judge.

4) There is one thing I found AP1 far better than EAP. It doesn't nag you to hold the wheel often. With EAP, even if I have both hands on the wheel, every 5 min or so it will flash and tell me to hold the wheel. I have to actually make little movement of the wheel to make it go away. With AP1, after driving about 30 miles, I realized that it didn't nag me once at all. So, as an experiment, I took my hands off the wheel completely. It didn't nag me for the next 7 to 10 min. And when it does, it went away pretty much as soon as I put my hands on the wheel.

 

[WannabeOwner]

My AP1 doesn't have unreasonable acceleration (my wife would pass comment from passenger seat .if it did!) [I don't use Chill Mode, but that may be a solution], and it doesn't wander nor frequently micro-adjust when staying in lane, so not sure your sample-size of one is representative (any more than mine is ... )

Apart from wandering when cresting a rise, the only slight niggle I have with AP1 is that is slow to change lanes (on turn signal) about 50% of the time. I have not been able to identify a cause - in situations where the road is completely clear front and back sometimes it is slow to change lanes, on other occasions no problem. Dunno how AP2 compares? (or is that a coming-soon feature for AP2?)

 

[chillaban]

Misalignment can play a huge role in how well Autosteer works. Both for AP1 and AP2, "I got a loaner and ____" could be an unreliable way to compare.

Even when I had AP1 I felt like I got a few loaners where AP1 did not perform as well as it did in my car.


AP2 right now is not much different from AP1 with regards to lane changes. But, it does indeed seem to be coming-soon that the "repeater camera" is starting to be calibrated and will serve as a more robust blind spot detector. But it's anyone's guess when that is coming.

 

[Need]

My AP1 doesn't have unreasonable acceleration (my wife would pass comment from passenger seat .if it did!) [I don't use Chill Mode, but that may be a solution], and it doesn't wander nor frequently micro-adjust when staying in lane, so not sure your sample-size of one is representative (any more than mine is ... )

Maybe my loaner MS autopilot is defective. And since I only have 1 loaner so far, can't really compare. I have a theory on the micro-adjust though. I noticed that when it was doing that, the car in front was also doing the same. It seems like AP1 was trying to mirror the car in front. I don't think EAP does that.

 

[chillaban]

Maybe my loaner MS autopilot is defective. And since I only have 1 loaner so far, can't really compare. I have a theory on the micro-adjust though. I noticed that when it was doing that, the car in front was also doing the same. It seems like AP1 was trying to mirror the car in front. I don't think EAP does that.

That's definitely true of AP1. AP1 loves trusting the driver in front. More so than it trusts lane lines.

This was really problematic for me on the highways. If you were in the far left lane and the driver in front of you likes the gawk at the backup by pulling onto the shoulder a bit, it wipes out the left side lane line and AP1 goes into blue car mode and follows him onto the shoulder.

 

[Need]

That's definitely true of AP1. AP1 loves trusting the driver in front. More so than it trusts lane lines.

This was really problematic for me on the highways. If you were in the far left lane and the driver in front of you likes the gawk at the backup by pulling onto the shoulder a bit, it wipes out the left side lane line and AP1 goes into blue car mode and follows him onto the shoulder.

Oh wow. I started to suspect the mirroring because I saw the car in front kept changing from a car to a moving truck to a car to a moving truck on the dashboard. The car in front was a pickup truck carrying a porta potty on the right side of the truck bed. When the car swayed to the left, AP1 thinks it is a moving truck with a tall back, when it centered, it thinks it is a car.

 

[jimmy_d]

It's daft, but I will say, this is the first time it's happened to me organically, my car says I was stupid enough to take the bait of another driver.... floor it for a second while already going about 80 on autopilot and then I'm locked out. But I agree, I should have been able to hit the voice command and say "sorry" and get my AP back.

I got booted once during a passing maneuver. The car's reaction was comical - as if I was scaring it. And having to pull over before I could re-engage just added to the petulance vibe. Anyway I learned to reflexively disengage autopilot before any "watch this!" maneuvers and haven't had an issue since.

 

[Need]

Just an update on my loaner's AP1. Now that I have put more miles on it, it seems to do a lot better. This morning drive (about 60 miles), I cannot tell the difference between the loaner's AP1, and my MX's EAP. I still see that sometime the car will steering to off center (toward left side of the lane), like when passing a semi, but that's what I would have done too if I am driving. With my MX EAP, it kept in the center of the lane when passing a really wide Semi... it is kind of scary.

Also I am wondering if AP1 has a training period. I noticed that my loaner has a new plate "Zero Emission". Probably a CPO or someone just traded it in. Maybe AP1 was reset and took some time to calibrate? It started to feel more and more like how I would have drive the car... not sure if the car was trained to my style of driving, or I am being used to how AP1 drives LOL.

 

[jimmy_d]

Ok! New record! Today AP2 did LA to SF with no forced disengagements on 18.2. That's something I've not managed on any earlier version, or on AP1, in maybe 25 previous runs over the last couple of years.

And the wipers worked fine, if anyone was wondering. There was some crazy rain about midway. Road spray was dropping visibility down to maybe 200 feet with everything else in whiteout but AP2 seemed to have no problems.

And I saw truckloads of Model 3s heading down to LA.

 

[jimmy_d]

And speaking of M3s - last week I went to Austin to pick up the one I bought for my sister. I put a few hundred miles on it and am happy to report that it's EXCELLENT. Not sure what I was expecting but I am really, really happy with it.

And AP on M3 is great. I was kind of confused at first because it seemed more stable than my MS, but later I realized that being smaller it has more visible margin and probably just feels more comfortable because of that. It probably moves around about the same amount. The MS is wide enough that judging distance on the passenger side can be challenging but the M3 seems to be less so. In any case I had no problems using it in and around Austin.

 

[buttershrimp]

And speaking of M3s - last week I went to Austin to pick up the one I bought for my sister. I put a few hundred miles on it and am happy to report that it's EXCELLENT. Not sure what I was expecting but I am really, really happy with it.

And AP on M3 is great. I was kind of confused at first because it seemed more stable than my MS, but later I realized that being smaller it has more visible margin and probably just feels more comfortable because of that. It probably moves around about the same amount. The MS is wide enough that judging distance on the passenger side can be challenging but the M3 seems to be less so. In any case I had no problems using it in and around Austin.

I gave jimmy some of my magic pixie AP dust I use in my videos.