I have done 500km since yesterday evening and over 400km of that was on Autopilot. (From Sunshine coast to Toowoomba and back, plus a bit of running around.) A few observations, some already noted by others.
The car performed better than i expected and I only had to take control about 6 times and all of those being slip roads the cars seemed keen to take, I was not game at 100kph to let it go and see if it corrected the error it self. I did eventually try that on a wide open exit where it started to move left and it did correct back into the lane but with a noticeable swerve. It was able to follow some surprisingly tight curves.
When driving up the Toowoomba range it handled following the winding road very well and even seemed to slow down to below the set cruise control speed on some sharper corners. I was holding the wheel and paying attention to other traffic to look too closely at the speed. I will try that again on some hinterland climbs to confirm I was not imagining it.
We encountered congestion on the Bruce hwy due to an accident and spent 20 minutes to cover 3km. It was faultless and made it such a breeze, you could have read a book as it trailed the traffic, smoothly matching the speed of the car in front from 0 to 10kmh.
Some auto lane changes required the car to sense a reasonable presence on the steering wheel, sometimes a light touch was enough. It will change lanes if you hold the indicator on without pushing past the detent. Doing it that way should be used as an indicator that you are paying attention, rather than the somewhat random amount of steering wheel pressure it wants to feel. Releasing the indicator too soon (less than half the car across the line) , it will cancel the change and move back into the original range. I found the car does move too far across to the far side of the lane you are entering before centring itself, on one occasion going onto the white line even though the indicator was off well before then.
It does not always hold the centre of the lane, it seems to be influenced by where the car in front is driving in the lane, but not all the time, I could not find a pattern in the habit. It follows a line around curves that is more conservative than I would take with regard to going close to the apex but it is certainly not an uncomfortable line that you feel you must correct.
After a few hundred km in Autopilot, towards the end of the trip in heavy Brisbane traffic when it was not in Autopilot, I had become so comfortable with the car having control that you had to consciously remember that you had to do the braking etc. Which is a good sign the the Autopilot style of driving feels fairly natural.
All up, a very impressive bit of technology that will get even better.
PS thanks Ray for the energy info for planning the trip, with 8 hours on the UMC overnight I had plenty for the return trip, arriving back with 20% left (P85D in range mode, 202 Wh/km on the way up and 162 Wh/km on the way back, sitting on the limit the whole time when traffic allowed). The UMC was charging at 10 amps, 245v and adding 11km per hour.
Still can't get the grin off my face. Although tinting will now help with the photo-bombing.
